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SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

AND 

OTHER COMRADES OF THE ROAD 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



Fairy Gold 



The Retinue and Other 
Poems 



E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY 




Joy OF.LiFE AND Sigurd 



SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

AND 

OTHER COMRADES of the ROAD 



BY 

KATHARINE LEE BATES 




NEW YORK 

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

68i FIFTH AVENUE 






Copyright, 19 19. 
By E. p. DUTTON & COMPANY 



All Rights Reserved 



Printed tii the United States of HmeHca 



g)Ci,A559007 



INSCRIBED 

TO 

THE ONE WHOM SIGURD LOVED BEST 



A few of the sketches and poems in this volume 
have already appeared in print. Acknowledgments 
are due to The Christian Endeavor Worlds Life^ The 
Outlook and Scrtbner's Magazine, 



CONTENTS 

I 

SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

PAGE 

Vigi .- . -.'''_ 3 

PUPPYHOOD 5 

The Dogs of Bethlehem 28 

Growing Up 30 

Laddie 55 

The Call of the Blood 57 

Sigurd's Meditations in the Church Porch ... 89 

Adventures 90 

The Heart of a Dog 120 

Home Studies . 121 

The Pleaders 144 

College Career 146 

To Sigurd 174 

Farewells 177 

To Joy-of-Life 215 

vii 



viii CONTENTS 

II 

OTHER COMRADES OF THE ROAD 

PAGE 

The Pine grove Path 2i8 

Robin Hood 219 

Why the Spire Fell . 246 

An Easter Chick 248 

How Birds Were Made 270 

Taka and Koma 272 

Warller Weather .288 

Summer Residents at a Wisconsin Lake. 

By Katharine Coman 290 

The Jester 304 

Emilius . 305 

HudsorCs Cat 322 

Catastrophes 324 

To Hamlet 349 

Hamlet and Polonius 350 



SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

AND 

OTHER COMRADES OF THE ROAD 



I 

SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 



VIGI 

Wisest of dogs was Vigi, a tawny-coated hound 
That King Olaf, warring over green hills of Ireland, found; 
His merry Norse were driving away a mighty herd 
For feasts upon the dragonships, when an isleman dared a 
word: 

"From all those stolen hundreds, well might ye spare my 

score." 
"Ay, take them," quoth the gamesome king, "but not a heifer 

more. 
Choose out thine own, nor hinder us; yet choose without a 

slip." 
The isleman laughed and whistled, his finger at his lip. 

Oh, swift the bright-eyed Vigi went darting through the herd 
And singled out his master's neat with a nose that never erred, 
And drave the star-marked twenty forth, to the wonder of the 

king, 
Who bought the hound right honestly, at the price of a broad 

gold ring. 

If the herddog dreamed of an Irish voice and of cattle on the 

hill, 
He told it not to Olaf the King, whose will was Vigi's will. 
But followed him far in faithful love and bravely helped him 

win 
His famous fight with Thorir Hart and Raud, the wizard Finn. 

Above the clamor and the clang shrill sounded Vigi's bark, 
And when the groaning ship of Raud drew seaward to the 

dark, 
And Thorir Hart leapt to the land, bidding his rowers live 
Who could, Olaf and Vigi strained hard on the fugitive. 



'Twas Vigi caught the runner's heel and stayed the windswift 

flight 
Till Olaf's well-hurled spear had changed the day to endless 

night 
For Thorir Hart, but not before his sword had stung the 

hound, 
Whom the heroes bore on shield to ship, all grieving for his 

wound. 

Now proud of heart was Vigi to be borne to ship on shield, 
And many a day thereafter, when the bitter thrust was healed, 
Would the dog leap up on the Vikings and coax with his 

Irish wit 
Till 'mid laughter a shield was leveled, and Vigi rode on it. 



PUPPYHOOD 

"Only the envy was, that it lasted not still, or, now it is 
past, cannot by imagination, much less description, be recov- 
ered to a part of that spirit it had *in the gliding by." 

— Jonson's Masque of Hymen, 

Sigurd was related to VIgi only by the line 
of Scandinavian literature. The Lady of Cedar 
Hill was enjoying the long summer daylights and 
marvelous rainbows of Norway, when word 
reached her that her livestock had been Increased 
by the advent of ten puppies, and back there came 
for them all, by return mail, heroic names straight 
out of that splendid old saga of Burnt Njal. 

But this Is not the beginning of the story. In- 
deed, Sigurd's story probably emerges from a 
deeper distance than the story of mankind. Mil- 
lions of glad creatures, his tawny ancestors, 
ranged the Highlands, slowly giving their wild 
hearts to the worship of man, and left no pedi- 
gree. The utmost of our knowledge only tells us 
that Sigurd's sire, the rough-coated collie Harwell 

Ralph (pronounced Rafe), born September 3, 

5 



6 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

1894, was the son of Heather Ralph, a purple 
name with wind and ripples in it, himself the son 
of the sonorous Stracathro Ralph, whose parents 
were Christopher, a champion of far renown, and 
Stracathro Fancy; and of lovely Apple Blossom, 
offspring of Metchley Wonder and Grove Daisy. 
Ralph's mother of blessed memory was Aughton 
Bessie; her parents were Edgbarton Marvel, son 
of that same champion Christopher and Sweet 
Marie, and Wellesboume Ada, in proudest 
Scotch descent from Douglas and Lady. 

Sigurd's mother, Trapelo Dora, born May 16, 
1900, was also a sable and white rough collie. 
Her sire, Barwell Masterpiece, son of Rightaway 
and Caermarther Lass, had for dashing grand- 
sires Finsbury Pilot and Ringleader, and for gen- 
tle grandams, Miss Purdue and Jane. Her mother, 
Barwell Queenie, came of the great lineage of 
Southport Perfection and numbered among her 
ancestors a Beauty, a Princess and a Barwell Bess. 

Those ten puppies, poor innocents, had some- 
thing to live up to. 

But their sire, Ralph, cared nothing for his dis- 
tinguished progenitors, not even for that prize 
grandmother who had sold for eight hundred 



PUPPYHOOD 7 

pounds, in comparison with the Lady of Cedar 
Hill, whom he frankly adored. His most bliss- 
ful moments were those in which he was allowed 
to sit up on the lounge beside her, his paw in her 
palm, his head on her shoulder, his brown eyes 
rolling up to her face with a look of liquid ec- 
stasy. He had been the guardian of Cedar Hill 
several years when Dora arrived. Shipped from 
those same Surrey kennels in which Ralph uttered 
his first squeal, her long journey over sea and 
land had been a fearsome experience. When the 
expressman dumped a travelworn box, labeled 
Live Dog, in the generous country house hall, 
and proceeded with some nervousness to knock off 
the slats, the assembled household grouped them- 
selves behind the most reassuring pieces of furni- 
ture for protection against the outrush of a fero- 
cious beast. But the delicate little collie that shot 
forth was herself in such terror that even the 
waiting dish of warm milk and bread, into which 
she splashed at once, could not allay her panic. 
From room to room she raced, hiding under sofas 
and behind screens, finding nothing that gavT her 
peace, not even when she came up against a long 
mirror and fronted her own reflection, another 



8 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

scared little collie, which she tried to kiss with a 
puzzled tongue against the glass. Then in saun- 
tered the lordly Ralph, whose indignant growl at 
the intruder died in his astonished throat as Dora 
confidingly flung herself upon him, leaping up and 
clinging to his well-groomed neck with grimy fore- 
legs quivering for joy. Ralph was a dog who 
prided himself on his respectability. Affronted, 
shocked, he shook off this impudent young hussy, 
but homesick little Dora would not be repelled. 
Here, at last, was something she recognized, 
something that belonged to her lost world of the 
kennels. Let Ralph be as surly as he might, he 
had her perfect confidence from the outset, while 
the winsome Lady of Cedar Hill had to coax for 
days before Dora would make the first timid re- 
sponse to these strange overtures of human friend- 
ship. 

As for Ralph, he decided to tolerate the nui- 
sance and in course of time found her gypsy 
pranks amusing, even although she treated him 
with increasing levity. As he took his prolonged 
siesta, she would frisk about him, biting first one 
ear and then the other, till at last he would rise in 
magnificent menace and go chasing after her, his 



PUPPYHOOD g 

middle-aged dignity melting from him In the fun 
of the frolic, till his antics outcapered her own. 

Dora's wits were brighter than his. If the 
Lady of Cedar Hill, after tossing a ball several 
times to the further end of the hall, for them to 
dash after in frantic emulation and bring back to 
her, only made a feint of throwing it, Ralph 
would hunt and hunt through the far corners of 
the room, while Dora, soon satisfying herself that 
the ball was not there, would dance back again 
and nose about the hands and pockets of her mis- 
tress, evidently concluding that the ball had not 
been thrown. Or if a door were closed upon 
them, Ralph would scratch long and furiously at 
its lower edge, while Dora, finding such efforts 
futile, would spring up and strike with her paw 
at the knob. 

The date made momentous by the arrival of 
the ten puppies was August 20, 1902. The Lady 
of Cedar Hill, home from the Norland, found 
Dora full of the prettiest pride In her fuzzy babies, 
while Ralph, stalking about in jealous disgust, did 
his best to convey the impression that those 
troublesome absurdities were In no way related to 
him. This was not so easy, for they, one and all. 



10 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

were smitten with admiration of their august 
father and determination to follow in his steps. 
No sooner did Ralph, after casting one glare of 
contempt upon his family, stroll off nonchalantly 
toward the famous Maze, the Mecca of all the 
children in the neighboring factory town, than a 
line of eager puppies went waddling after. Glanc- 
ing uneasily back, Ralph would give vent to a 
fierce paternal snarl, whereat squat on their 
stomachs would grovel the train, every puppy 
wriggling all over with delicious fright. But no 
sooner did Ralph proceed, with an attempt to re- 
sume his careless bachelor poise, than again he 
found those ten preposterous puppies panting 
along in a wavy procession at his very heels. 

Only one of the puppies failed to thrive. 
Fragile little Karl, inappropriately named for one 
of the most terrible of the Vikings, died at the 
end of three months. But Helgi and Helga, 
Hauskuld and Hlldigunna, Hrut, Unna and 
FlosI, Gunnar and Njal, waxed in size, activity 
and naughtiness until, In self-defense, the Lady 
of Cedar Hill began to give them away to her 
fortunate friends. Joy-of-LIfe was Invited over 
to make an early choice. As Wellesley is not far 



PUPPYHOOD II 

from Cedar Hill, whose mistress she dearly loved, 
she went again and again, studying the youngsters 
with characteristic earnestness. They were nearly 
full-grown before she drove me over to confirm 
her election. The dogs were called up to meet 
us, and the lawn before the house looked to my 
bewildered gaze one white and golden blur of 
cavorting collies. 

"Are they all here?'* I asked, after vain efforts 
to count the heads in that whirl of perpetual mo- 
tion. 

"All but the barn dog," replied the Lady of 
Cedar Hill. "He is kept chained for the present, 
until he gets wonted to his humble sphere, but we 
will go down and call on him." 

He saw us first. An excited bark made me 
aware of a young collie, almost erect in the barn 
door, tugging madly against his chain. The Lady 
of Cedar Hill, with a loving laugh, ran forward 
to release him. His gambol of gratitude nearly 
knocked her down, but before she had recovered 
her balance he was too far away for rebuke, romp- 
ing, bounding, wheeling about the meadow, such 
a glorious image of wild grace and rapturous free- 
dom that our hearts gladdened as we looked. 



la SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

**But he is the most beautiful of all/' I ex- 
claimed. 

"Oh, no," said the instructed Lady of Cedar 
Hill, "not from the blue-ribbon point of view." 
And she went on to explain that Njal, the biggest 
of the nine, was quite too big for a collie of such 
distinguished pedigree. His happy body, gleam- 
ing pure gold in the sun, with its snowy, tossing 
ruff, was both too tall and too long. His white- 
tipped tail was too luxuriantly splendid. The 
cock of his shining ears was not in the latest ken- 
nel style. His honest muzzle was a trifle blunt. 
He was, in short, lacking in various fine points of 
collie elegance, and so, while his dainty, aristo- 
cratic brothers and sisters were destined to be the 
ornaments of gentle homes, Njal was relegated 
to a life of service, in care of the cattle, and to 
that end had been for the month past kept in 
banishment at the barn. 

But Njal had persistently rebelled against his 
destiny. He declined to explore the barn, always 
straining at the end of his chain in the doorway, 
watching with wistful eyes the frolics of his 
mother, hardly more than a puppy herself, with 
.her overwhelming children. She seemed to have 



PUPPYHOOD 13 

forgotten that Njal was one of her own. He 
would not make friends with the dairymen nor 
with the coachman, and though he showed an oc- 
casional interest in the horses, he utterly ignored 
the cows and calves whose guardian he was in- 
tended to be. Even now. In defiance of social 
distinctions, he dashed into the house, which, as 
we came hurrying up behind him, resounded with 
the reproachful voices of the maids. 

"Njal, get out I You know you're not allowed 
in here.'* 

"Njal, jump down off that bed this minute. 
The impudence of him I" 

"Njal, drop that ball. It doesn't belong to you. 
Be off to the barn." 

The maids, aided by Njal's brothers and sis- 
ters, who struck me as officious, had just succeeded 
in chasing him out as we came to the door, but 
he flashed past us, tail erect, enthusiastically bent 
on greeting his glorious sire, who was majestically 
pacing up to Investigate this unseemly commotion. 

"Poor Njal I Even more than the rest, he 
idolizes his father," said the Lady of Cedar Hill, 
as Ralph met his son with a growl and a cuff. 

Crestfallen at last, Njal trotted back to his 



14 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

mistress and stood gazing up at her with great, 
amber eyes, that held, if ever eyes did, wounded 
love and a beseeching for comfort. She stroked 
his head, but bade one of the maids fetch a leash 
and take him back where he belonged. 

I glanced at Joy-of-Life. That glance was all 
she had been waiting for. 

"Njal is my dog," she said. 

*'What! Not Njal!" protested the Lady of 
Cedar Hill. "Why, in the count of collie 
points " 

"But Fm not looking for a dog to keep me 
supplied with blue ribbons. I want a friend. 
Njal has a soul.'' 

The Lady of Cedar Hill bent a doubtful glance 
on me. 

"Oh, we've just settled that," smiled Joy-of- 
Life. "She would rather have him than all the 
other eight." 

So It was that on the last day of June, 1903, 
we drove again to Cedar Hill to bring our collie 
home. 

"It's a queer choice," laughed our hostess, as 
she poured tea, "but at least you need not put 
yourselves out for him. He Is used to the barn, 



PUPPYHOOD 15 

and a box of straw in your cellar will be quite 
good enough for Njal." 

She rang for more cream. No maid appeared. 
Surprised, she rang again, sharply. Still no re- 
sponse. One of the ever numerous guests rose 
and went out to the kitchen. She came back 
laughing. 

"All the maids are kneeling around Njal, dis- 
puting as to whose ribbon becomes him best and 
worshiping him as if he were the golden calf. ^ 
And really William has given an amazing shine 
to that yellow coat of his. It is astonishing what 
a splendid fellow the barn-puppy has grown to 
be." 

In came Jane with the cream, blushing for her 
delay, but lingering to see what reception would 
be given the collie who walked politely a step or 
two behind. 

Groomed till he shone, his new leather collar 
adorned with a flaring orange-satin bow, Njal 
entered with the quiet stateliness of one to draw- 
ing-rooms born, widely waving his tall in saluta- 
tion to the entire company. But It was to the 
Lady of Cedar Hill that he went and against her 
side that he pressed close, while his questioning 



i6 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

eyes passed from face to face, for he seemed al- 
ready aware of an impending change in his for- 
tunes. 

The phaeton was brought to the door. Joy-of- 
Life and I took our places, and the Lady of Cedar 
Hill, who gave her puppies away right royally, 
passed in a new leash and complete box of brushes. 
Then the coachman lifted Njal, an armful of 
sprawling legs, and deposited him at our feet. 
The collie sat upright, making no effort to escape. 
But as his mistress perched on the carriage step 
to give him a good-bye hug, his eyes looked back 
into hers so wistfully, and yet so trustfully, that 
one of the maids in the background was heard 
to sniff. 

"Be a good doggie," the beloved voice adjured 
him, "and don't give your new ladies any trouble 
on the long drive.'' 

If he promised, he certainly kept his word. All 
the way he sat quietly where he had been put, 
erect and alert, watching the road and bestowing 
a very special regard on every dog and cat we 
passed. When we reached our modest home, he 
jumped out at our bidding, entered the open door 
and proceeded steadily from room to room, look- 



PUPPYHOOD 17 

ing long out of each window as if hoping to find 
a familiar view. We had been warned that 
strange surroundings would probably affect his 
appetite, but Njal was far too sensible a collie 
to disdain a good dinner. He took to his puppy- 
biscuit and gravy with such, a rehsh that, in an 
incredibly short period, the empty dish was danc- 
ing on the gravel under the hopeful insistence of 
his tongue. Homesickness, however, came on 
with the dusk. He gazed longingly from the 
piazza down the road, and when we attempted to 
introduce him to the cellar and his waiting box 
of plentiful clean straw, he resisted in a sudden 
agony of fright. 

Njal had known nothing of cellars, and the 
terror with which that unnatural, lonesome hollow 
under ground affected him lasted for two full 
years. Then a visiting nephew, boy-wise in the 
ways of animals, romping with him, purposely 
scampered back and forth through the cellar, run- 
ning in at one door and out at the other, so that 
the dog, in the ardor of the chase, had traversed 
that realm of awful chill and gloom before he 
realized where he was. Later on, one torrid 
afternoon, I carried a bone down cellar and, sit- 



i8 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

ting on a log beside It, chanted Its praises until, 
tempted beyond endurance, Njal came tumbling 
headlong downstairs and fell upon It. For a little 
while longer, he would not stay In the cellar with- 
out companionship, but at last his dread was so 
entirely overcome that. In the midsummer heats, 
the cellar, and especially, to our regret, the coal 
bin, was his favorite resort. 

But on this first night he would have none of It. 
We were reluctant to use force and compromised 
on the bathroom. Here he obediently lay down 
and bore his lot In silence till dead of night, when 
at last the rising tide of desolation so overswelled 
his puppy heart that a sudden wail, which would 
have done credit to a banshee, woke everybody in 
the house. 

The second evening he made his own arrange- 
ments. Our academic home was simple in Its ap- 
pointments, — so simple that Joy-of-LIfe and I 
often merrily quoted to each other the comment 
of a calling freshman: 

"When Vm old, I mean to have a dear little 
house just like this one, all furnished with nothing 
but books.'* 

The barn-dog inspected our chambers and 



PUPPYHOOD 19 

promptly decided that only the best was good 
enough for him. This approved bower was then 
occupied by the Dryad, over whose couch was 
appropriately spread a velvety green cover, a for- 
eign treasure of her own, marvelous for many- 
hued embroidery. As bedtime came on, Njal dis- 
appeared and was nowhere to be found, until the 
Dryad's pealing laugh brought us to her room, 
where a ball of golden collie, even the tail de- 
murely tucked In, was sleeping desperately hard 
in the middle of the choice coverlet. One anxious 
eye blinked at us and then shut up tighter than 
ever. Njal was so determined not to be budged 
that the tender-hearted Dryad took his part and 
pleaded against our amateur efforts at discipline. 

"Poor puppy ! Let him be my room-mate to- 
night. He's so new and scared. He can sleep 
over there on the lounge under that farthest win- 
dow and he will not bother me one bit." 

Njal consented to this transfer, but In the small 
hours homesickness again swept his soul and he 
jumped up beside the Dryad, to whom he nestled 
close. The night was excessively hot, and the 
morning found a pallid lady snatching a belated 



20 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

nap on the lounge under the far window, while 
Njal remained in proud possession of the bed. 

Joy-of-Life thereafter insisted on leashing him 
at night in the lower hall, where we would spread 
out for him the Thunder-and-Lightning Rug, an 
embarrassing gift for which we had never before 
been able to find a use. There he would content- 
edly take his post, the conscious guardian of the 
house, his white and yellow in vivid contrast to 
the black and scarlet of the rug, and his blue- 
figured Japanese bowl of water within easy reach. 
This disposition of our problem worked both 
well and ill, since Njal found distraction from 
his diminishing attacks of nostalgia in trying with 
his sharp white teeth the toughness of the leashes 
which succeeded one another in costly succession. 
But as a watch dog he took himself most seri- 
ously, though not greatly to the furtherance of 
our repose. From the depths of slumber he would 
leap up with a dynamic bark, accompanied by a 
bass growl, as if there were two of him, spinning 
around and around upon his leash, until we all 
rose from our beds, grasping electric torches, and 
sped downstairs to behold a fat beetle scuttling 
off across the floor or to hear the receding scam- 



PUPPYHOOD 21 

per of a mouse behind the wainscot. On the night 
before the Fourth, outraged by such a racket as 
he had never heard before, our ten-months-old 
protector succeeded In making more noise than all 
the horns, torpedoes and firecrackers In our pa- 
triotic neighborhood. 

We celebrated the national holiday by chang- 
ing his name, which sounded in the mouth of the 
mocker too much like miaul, to that of the shining 
hero of the Volsunga Saga, Joy-of-LIfe hesitated 
a little lest the Lady of Cedar Hill should deem 
her own Norse hero, Burnt Njal, *'gentle and 
generous,'* treated with discourtesy, but I pleaded 
that in all likelihood our home would never again 
be blessed with anything so young and so yellow, 
so altogether fit to bear the honors of the Golden 
Sigurd. The collie readily accepted his new name, 
but never forgot the old, and even to the last year 
of his sunny life, if the word Njal were spoken, 
however softly, would glance up with bright rec- 
ognition. 

Sigurd bore himself through that first July with 
such civility and dignity that we did not dream 
how homesick he really was, — that towering 
puppy, who looked absurdly tall as we took him 



22 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

out to walk on his latest leash. He submitted to 
this needless indignity as he submitted to the long 
chain that bound him to the piazza railing, with 
magnanimous forbearance. We had used a rope 
at first, but he felt it a point of honor to gnaw this 
apart, coming cheerfully to meet us with a sec- 
tion of our clothesline trailing from his collar. 
Through these first weeks he had much to occupy 
his mind and tax his fortitude in the engine whis- 
tles and rumble of trains, the whirr of electric 
cars, CeciHa's energetic broom that threatened to 
brush him off the piazza, the manners of the 
market-man, who, unlearned in Norse mythology, 
injuriously called him Jigger, and divers other 
perils and excitements. His ears were forever on 
the cock and his tail busy with the agitated utter- 
ance of his changing emotions. When we ven- 
tured, after a little, to let him run loose, he in- 
vestigated the immediate territory but kept within 
call, bounding to meet us as we came out to look 
for him. The first time that he actually ventured 
off on an independent quest, he came tearing back 
after forty minutes' absence as if he had been 
putting a girdle round the earth, insisting on a 
complete and repeated family welcome as well as 



PUPPYHOOD 23 

a second breakfast. My first vivid sense of the 
comfort of having a dog smote me on the edge 
of a tired evening, when, trudging home from a 
long day in one of the Boston libraries, a sudden 
nose was thrust into my hand and a gleaming 
shape leapt up out of the roadside shadows in 
jubilant welcome. So we supposed our collie was 
light-hearted. 

But one after-sunset hour, when we had feloni- 
ously sallied out to strip the flower-beds of an 
absent neighbor, Sigurd, in amiable attendance, 
suddenly started, wheeled and was off down the 
hill like a shimmering arrow of Apollo. How 
>was he aware of her at that distance, in that dusk, 
the Lady of Cedar Hill? He flung himself like a 
happy avalanche upon her and poured out all the 
bewilderment and yearning, the lonesomeness and 
love of his loyal soul, in a shrill, ecstatic tremolo 
that we came to designate as *'Sigurd's lyric cry." 
It was reserved for a favored few, objects of ro- 
mantic devotion; It was rarely vouchsafed to the 
commonplace members of his own household; but 
it never failed the Lady of Cedar Hill, though 
months might elapse between her visits. 

On this her first coming, his joy was touching 



24 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

to see. He pressed close to her side as she walked 
up the hill and after she had seated herself in a 
piazza chair he tried to climb into her lap as in 
his fuzzy puppyhood, and succeeded, too, though 
he hung over her knees like a yellow festoon, his 
feet touching the floor on either side and his plumy 
tail fanning her face. Yet when she went away, 
he made no effort to follow. He watched her 
intently from the piazza steps as she passed down 
the hill and turned the corner. When she was 
out of sight, tail and ears drooped and he came in 
of his own accord, soberly lying down on the 
Thunder-and-Lightning Rug, beside his leash. 
Feelings were all very well in their way, but duty 
was supreme. He had a house to guard from 
beetles and other bugbears of the night. 

Sigurd was so big and strong that he needed 
plenty of exercise. Before he came, a spacious 
"run'* had been provided for him on the wild 
bank, hardly yet redeemed from the forest, back 
of the house, but this he promptly repudiated for 
all purposes of frolic. He seemed to regard it 
as a singing-school, for, dragged out there "to 
play," he would sit on his haunches and practice 
dirge-music in howls of intolerable crescendo 



PUPPYHOOD 2S 

until a decent respect for the opinions of the 
neighbors obliged us to bring him in. We called 
him our gymnasium, walking and romping with 
him all we could, but our utmost was not enough. 
So we would drive out, once or twice a week^ 
along the less frequented roads, though auto- 
mobiles were not so many then, to give the boy a 
*'scimper-scamper.'* He delighted to accompany 
the carriage, running alongside with brief dashes 
down the bank for water or into the woods after 
a squirrel. When he was tired, he would run 
close and look up, asking for a lift, but after a 
few minutes of panting repose, lying across the 
phaeton in front of our feet, nose and tail in 
alarming proximity to the wheels, he would want 
to scramble out and race again. 

The first time that we took him back to Cedar 
Hill was a thrilling event for Sigurd. He had 
been running most of the way and jumped In just 
before we reached familiar landmarks. As soon 
as these appeared, all his weariness vanished. 
Standing erect, eyes shining, ears pricked up, nose 
quivering, his tall thumping the dashboard with 
Jouder and louder blows, he sent his lyric cry like 
a bugle through the air, heralding our approach 



26 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

^o well that all his kindred yet remaining on the 
estate, as well as his original mistress, her guests 
and her maids, were drawn up on the lawn and 
steps to receive us. Sigurd sprang out before the 
horse had stopped and tore up with a special 
squeal of filial devotion to greet his sire, Ralph 
the Magnificent, who was barely restrained by a 
circle of strenuous hands on his collar from hurl- 
ing himself in fury on this most obnoxious of his 
sons. Dora trotted up and sniffed at him with 
coquettish curiosity, as if wondering who this 
golden young gallant might be, but her bearing 
could by no stretch of language by styled maternal. 
,Gunnar, a puppy with every mark of high descent, 
now installed on the estate as crown prince, was 
so Infected by his father's rage that they both had 
;to be shut up during our stay. Sigurd pranced 
rapturously all over the place, visiting every scene 
of his childhood with the conspicuous exception 
of the barn. He disdained to recognize the cows 
and gave but a supercilious curl of his tail even 
to the most affable of the dairymen. A cattle- 
dog, indeed! He invited himself to tea In the 
drawing-room and had the further Impertinence 
to take a snooze on Dora's own cushion, close to 



PUPPYHOOD 27 

the skirts of the Lady of Cedar Hill. She 
doubted whether he would be willing to go back 
with us, but when the phaeton was driven to the 
door, Sigurd rushed out to meet it and leapt into 
his place before we had finished our more cere- 
monious farewells. We knew then that he was 
really ours. 



THE DOGS OF BETHLEHEM 

Many a starry night had they known, 
Melampo, Lupina and Cubilon, 

Shepherd-dogs, keeping 

The flocks, unsleeping. 
Serving their masters for crust and bone. 

Many a starlight but never like thi«, 
For star on star -was a chrysalis 

Whence there went soaring 

A winged, adoring 
Splendor out-pouring a carol of bliss. 

Sniffing and bristling the gaunt dogs stood, 
Till the seraphs, who smiled at their hardihood, 

Calmed their panic 

With talismanic 
Touches like wind in the underwood. 

In the dust of the road like gold-dust blown, 
Melampo, Lupina and Cubilon 

Saw strange kings, faring 

On camels, bearing 
Treasures too bright for a mortal throne. 

Shepherds three on their crooks a-leap 
Sped after the kings up the rugged steep 

To Bethlehem; only 

The dogs, left lonely. 
Stayed by the fold and guarded the sheep. 



Faithful, grim hearts! The marvelous glow 
Flooded e'en these with its overflow, 

Wolfishness turning 

Into a yearning 
To worship the highest a dog may know. 

When dawn brought the shepherds, each to his own, 
Melampo, Lupina and Cubilon 

Bounded to meet them, 

Frolicked to greet them. 
Eager to serve them for lore alowe. 



GROWING UP 

**Rfe years were full; his years were joyous; Vflef 
Must love be sorrow, when his gracious name 
Recalls his lovely life of limb and eye?" 

— Swinburne's At a Dog^s Grofve. 

Now that we realized not only that we had 
adopted Sigurd but that Sigurd had adopted us, 
we entered into an ever deepening enjoyment of 
our dog. Be it understood that we were teach- 
ers, writers, servants of causes, boards, commit- 
tees, mere professional women, with too little 
leisure for the home we loved. Had our hurried 
days given opportunity for the fine art of mother- 
ing we would have cherished a child instead of a 
collie, but Sigurd throve on neglect and saved us 
from turning into plaster images by making light 
of all our serious concerns. No academic dignities 
impressed his happy irreverence. 

"What is Sigurd slinging about there on the 
lawn?" I asked on his first Commencement morn- 
ing. *'It looks as if he had a muskrat by the tail." 

Joy-of-Life glanced apprehensively from the 
30 



GROWING UP 31 

window to the bed, on which she had carefully 
laid out a dean's glistening regalia. 

"My cap!'' she ejaculated and dashed down-, 
stairs and out of the door and away over the 
grass after a frolicsome bandit who knew of no 
better use for a mortar-board — perhaps there is 
none — ^than to spin it around by its gilt tassel. 

He had no regard for manuscript, after a thor- 
ough investigation had convinced him that it was 
not good to eat, and made no scruple of breaking 
in on our most absorbed moments with an in- 
sistent demand for play. Whatever the game 
might be, he infused it with dramatic quality, 
turning every romp into a thrilling adventure. 
He liked to pretend that he was Jack the Giant- 
Killer and would crouch and growl and bristle 
and finally hurl himself upon some ogre of a 
wastepaper basket, overthrowing it in the first 
onslaught and then worrying Its scattered con- 
tents with mimic fury. For punishment, we would 
clap the basket tight over his head, and he would 
back into a corner. Indulging in all sorts of pro- 
fane remarks while he pawed and shook that In- 
sulting helmet off, but carefully, for he clearly 
understood that, though what it held was sub- 



32 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

ject to his teeth, the basket Itself must not be 
harmed. He pretended to be bitterly outraged 
by this treatment, but no sooner was the basket 
in position beside the desk again than he would 
caper up and gleefully knock it over, promptly 
presenting his ruffled head to have his punishment 
repeated. 

Apart from our enjoyment of his crimes, it was 
difficult to punish him, because his sunny spirit 
turned every fresh experience Into fun. He re- 
minded me of a family tradition of an incorrigible 
baby uncle, whose clerical father, In despair at 
the child's ability to find amusement under all 
penal circumstances, stripped him naked and shut 
him into an empty room to repent of his sins. But 
when the parental eye condescended to the key- 
hole, it beheld a rosy cherub with puffed-out 
cheeks dancing merrily about and blowing a be- 
wildered fly from one end of the chamber to the 
other. 

Sigurd loved nothing better than make-believe 
discipline, — ^to be whacked \^Ith the feather- 
duster, "blown away" with the bellows, rolled up 
in the Sunday newspaper, anything that gave him 
an excuse for frisking, barking, dodging, scamper- 



GROWING UP 33 

ing, kicking, rolling, tumbling, and rushing in at 
the last for a hug of assured understanding. We 
could keep him quiet for hours at a time by put- 
ting a cooky or any bit of sweet into a small 
pasteboard box, tying it up and, fitting it into as 
many more, of increasing sizes, as time and ma- 
terial allowed. Sigurd would watch the process 
with sparkling eyes and then, taking the packet 
between his forepaws, settle down to the long 
task of getting at that cooky. Sometimes he 
would sigh with weariness or sink his yellow head 
to the floor in momentary despair. But he never 
gave up, though he often paused long enough to 
restore his energies by a nap. Taking the ragged 
bundle to another part of the room, as if his la- 
bors might be assisted by some special quality in 
a different rug, he would fall upon his puzzle 
again and not desist until the goal of all that 
patient endeavor, one morsel of sweetness, gave 
its brief delight to his triumphant tongue. This 
device of the boxes was a great resource when 
rough weather kept us in, for the youngster, who 
did not yet venture far without us, was Incessant 
in his search for occupation. When this led him 
into genuine mischief and brought upon him ac- 



34 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

tual rebuke, he took It so to heart that no member 
of the household, In kitchen or study, could get 
on with her work for the next half-day, for Sigurd 
would trot from one to another, with Imploring 
eyes, Insisting on shaking paws and being forgiven 
over and over again. 

A most affectionate little fellow he was, and 
would sit still at my knee by the hour so long as 
he was occasionally patted and addressed by what 
he instantly recognized as a pet name, — Opals, 
or Blessed Buttercup, or Honey of Hybla, or 
Sulphur of my Soul. Epithets falling, he would 
touch my foot at intervals with a reminding paw. 
Then, absorbed in my work, I would absent- 
mindedly, on the edges of my consciousness, con- 
jure up more titles for him, — ^Yellowboy, Crocus, 
Sunflower, Topaz, Mustard, Nugget, Starshine, 
his appreciative tall thumping the floor at every 
one. He wanted to be good and was aided by a 
happy disposition that, when one line of activity 
was cut off, found prompt solace In another. 
After a few trials had convinced him that bones, 
though polished in his most masterly manner and 
disposed behind doors and under sofa pillows 
with engaging modesty, were not acceptable orna- 



I 



GROWING UP 35 

ments of the house, he so rejoiced in the new- 
found art of burying them in the earth that, for 
a time, all his dainties went the same way, and 
the gardener's hoe would turn up petrified pieces 
of sponge cake and gingerbread at which Sigurd 
would sniff in embarrassed reminiscence. 

Day by day the puppy was learning not only the 
ways of the house, but what he considered a 
proper demeanor toward our variety of callers. 
He took up the domestic routine almost at once 
and developed such an exact sense of time that we 
used to call him our four-o'clock. At this merry 
hour we would drop pens, shut books and take 
Sigurd to walk, — a duty that he by no means al- 
lowed us to forget. At the exact moment his 
Woof, Woof rang out like a bell into *'the still 
air of delightful studies" and ijpon his protesting 
playmates Sigurd would burst like a thunderbolt, 
catching at our dresses and literally dragging us 
away from our desks. At mealtimes, too, with 
inexorable punctuality he herded the family to the 
dining room. But most of the day he was doing 
sentry duty on the doorsteps, incidentally offering 
his comment on every happening of the road and 
neighborhood. Tramps he abominated and, not 



36 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

content with driving them from our own premises, 
roared them away from every back door on the 
hill. His prejudice had to do, apparently, less 
with their looks and even their smell than with 
something stealthy and furtive in their approach. 
Skulking he abhorred. On one occasion he 
brought pink confusion to the cheeks of a little 
seamstress who was passing in a bundle at the 
door while her sheepish young escort hid in the 
shrubbery. It did not take Sigurd thirty seconds 
to drive that gawk from cover. To a recognized 
friend our collie would act as master of cere- 
monies, bounding down the walk to give him wel- 
come, barking sharply to save him the trouble of 
ringing the bell, dashing in ahead with the glorious 
news of the arrival and then scampering back to 
thrust into the visitor's palm a cordial, clumsy 
paw, wagging that plumy tail meanwhile with an 
impetuous swing that sometimes swept before It 
small articles from cabinet or tea-table. Some- 
times he would take a fancy to an utter stranger 
and greet him as an angel from the blue, singing 
love-at-first-sight to him at the top of his funny 
squeal, a four-legged troubadour. College girls 
he regarded as his natural chums and would frisk 



GROWING UP 37 

about them or leap upon them as the mood took 
him; middle-aged folk, like his mistresses, were 
all very well in their serviceable way; but the 
romance of life centered for Sigurd in old ladles. 
The whiter the hair, the more beautiful. For 
them he would spring up on his hind feet and rest 
his forepaws on their shoulders, pressing his face 
against their cheeks with such ardor that once, 
when such an encounter occurred on the street, a 
gentleman rushed from across the road, with 
upraised cane, to the rescue. 

"Kindly let us alone, sir,'* crisply rebuked the 
Lovely Object, her bonnet askew but her face 
beaming. "This dog and I understand each other 
and we want no interference.*' 

When a company of callers were seated, Sigurd, 
in a rapture of hospitality, would hurry again and 
again around the circle, shaking paws with each 
in turn and uttering a continuous, soft quaver of 
welcome, pleasure and pride. Then he would lie 
down contentedly In the very center of the group, 
now and then rolling over on his back in the hope 
that it would occur to somebody to slap his fluffy 
breast. 

At first he often made mistakes in his ofEce of 



38 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

sentinel. It was funny to see him rush madly to 
the door at a suspicious step and then, abashed by 
the jocular greeting of some household familiar, 
drop the role of heroic defender and, waving his 
tail affably but with a certain reserve, push by on 
the pretense that he was just coming out to take 
a squint at the weather. 

Of sensitive and generous nature, our golden 
collie was quick to feel the difference between an 
intentional hurt and an accident. He had been 
with us only a few weeks when a college colleague, 
then brightening our table with her presence, 
started to play stick with him before dinner. 
Sigurd^s way of playing stick was to bring you 
anything from a clothespin to a beanpole and coax 
you to throw it for him, holding it up lightly be- 
tween his teeth for you to take. This time he 
had a piece of board with jagged ends, and our 
friend, whose own dog, a monstrously ugly and 
therefore supremely choice Boston Bull, would 
hang on to a stick with iron jaws while she tried 
in vain to wrench it from him, mistook the game. 
Sigurd held up his stick by one end, deftly bal- 
ancing It In the air, and she, supposing that he 
would maintain his grip, rammed it suddenly 



GROWING UP 39 

down his throat. But Sigurd, eager for his run, 
iSLt once let go, with the result that his throat was 
rather badly cut. He was surprised into one 
scream of pain and then silently tore about in 
circles, his tail low and rigid. His would-be play- 
mate, grieved to the heart, had hurried for his 
Japanese water-bowl, but Sigurd would touch 
nothing that she brought. He went, instead, to a 
natural basin in the rock, always his favorite 
drinking-cup, where he lapped away at a prodi- 
gious rate, leaving a red stain on the water. After 
this he hid in the bushes, and it was not until din- 
ner was nearly over that Sigurd came trotting in, 
ears and tail still depressed. Joy-of-Life, with 
the voice that was healing in itself, called him to 
her, but he passed us both by, going straight to 
the comparative stranger who had innocently hurt 
him. Settling on his haunches beside her chair, 
Sigurd gazed up mournfully but understandingly 
into her eyes and offered his magnanimous paw. 

**You know I didn't mean to, and you came in 
to say so and to forgive me, you perfect little 
gentleman,*' she exclaimed, shaking the proffered 
paw as deferentially as if it had been the hand of 
Socrates. And that was the end of It. Sigurd 



40 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

coughed up a little blood and a few splinters that 
night, but he always met this lady, on her fre- 
quent comings, with a special, quiet courtesy, 
though he never invited her to a game of stick 
again. 

Sigurd had one playmate who shamefully im- 
posed upon his noble disposition. Nellie was an 
ancient spaniel, whose black curls were turning a 
dingy gray. She was our next neighbor and 
Sigurd's first love. Nellie was too fat and wh^eezy 
to romp, but she would sit, blinking approval, the 
center of a circle whose circumference was made 
by the golden gambols of our Infatuated puppy. 
Around and around her he would caper, while she 
yawned and scratched — she was always a vulgar 
old thing — and took her exercise by proxy. We 
did not allow Nellie Inside the house, to Sigurd's 
grieved surprise, but his dinner-dlsh was regularly 
set out of doors, by the back steps, and Nellie, 
every now and then, when her own rations had 
not been satisfactory or when Sigurd had pecu- 
liarly toothsome viands on his plate, would take 
advantage of his chivalry to play on him a low- 
down trick. Out of sight on the other side of the 
house, she would raise a wall of feigned distress, 



GROWING UP 41 

whereupon our gallant Volsung, just in the first 
enjoyment of his food, would lift his head, listen, 
even drop the piece of meat in his mouth and 
speed away to her rescue, running down one hill 
and up another in a vain endeavor to discover 
the villain of whom she had complained. Mean- 
while Nellie, puffing with detestable delight, 
would waddle around to the doorsteps and gobble 
up the best of Sigurd's dinner. When she heard 
him bounding back, she discreetly shuffled off, so 
that Sigurd's ideal remained unspotted. Dear, 
faithful lad I To the last of her disgraceful days, 
he was old Nellie's champion and dupe. 

All the while his development was going on 
apace. When he came to us he was already, like 
his brothers and sisters, proficient in giving the 
right paw, and could also, under protest, stand 
on his hind legs In a corner and "go roly-poly," a 
senseless performance, that he detested, on floors, 
but a natural and joyful gymnastic on the grass. 
He soon added to these accomplishments the agile 
arts of jumping over a stick and leaping through 
a hoop, though his tribulations with the hoop were 
many. He would brandish it over his head, run 
with it and trip in it, get his legs and body all 



42 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

wound up in it, and finally throw himself upon it 
and bite it into docility. He readily learned to 
catch, but his tastes were not extravagant and he 
would disdainfully drop in the thickets the rubber 
balls that were bought for him and grub up for 
himself some crooked branch or tough old chip 
that suited his purpose better. 

Being educators ourselves, we did not think 
much of education as such and gave little atten- 
tion to teaching him artificial tricks. Joy-of-Life 
was in favor of vocational training and decided 
that he must learn to guard. Her efforts nearly 
achieved success. For one proud fortnight Sigurd 
would, at the word of command, lie down and, 
resisting every temptation to leave his post, watch 
over a handkerchief or glove or parasol until he 
was called off by the same voice that had im- 
posed the duty on him. It was I who ruined this 
excellent attainment by setting him, beside a 
pansy-bed agleam with sympathetic twinkles, to 
guard a hoptoad. To Sigurd's dismay and annoy- 
ance that brownie of the garden refused to play 
the game. How could a puppy remain at his 
post if his post would not remain at the puppy? 
Sigurd tried to paw the toad back into place, he 



GROWING UP 43 

remonstrated with it in a series of shrill barks 
and at last, when he heard us laughing at him, 
he indignantly repudiated, and forever, the whole 
business of guarding. It was then that Joy-of- 
Life accused me of being a demoralizing influence 
and for Sigurd^s good reminded me of what I had 
quite forgotten and he had never known, — that he 
was not *'our puppy" but hers. 

"I want," said Joy-of-Life, bending her earnest 
look upon us both, *'that Sigurd should grow up 
into a good dog, and how can he be a good dog 
if you turn duty into a joke?" 

I felt so guilty that Sigurd hurried over to lick 
my hand. 

"Whose dog are you, Gold of Ophir?" I asked, 
and Sigurd, with an impartial flourish of his tail, 
lay down exactly between us. 

This delicate question was ultimately decided 
by no less an arbiter than Mother Goose. In 
pursuance of the theory that her immortal non- 
sense songs were written by Oliver Goldsmith — 
this is what is known as Literary Research — I 
had obtained leave from a Boston librarian, an 
indulgent spirit now gone to his reward, to take 
home for comparison with an accumulation of 



44 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

other texts a unique copy, exquisitely printed on 
creamy pages with wide margins and choicely 
bound in white and gold. It was an extraordinary 
grace of permission and, even in the act of pass- 
ing that gem of a volume over, the librarian hesi- 
tated. 

"It must not come to harm," he said, *'for it 
is irreplaceable ; but I know how you value books 
and I believe there are no children, to whom this 
might be a temptation, under your roof." 

"Unfortunately, no ; only a puppy." 

"We will risk the puppy," he smiled, — ^but he 
did not know Sigurd. 

I carried that book home as carefully as if it 
had been a nest of humming-bird's eggs. As I 
used it that evening at my desk, I propped it up 
at a far distance from any possible spatter of ink. 
Then I slipped it into a vacant space on the shelf 
of the revolving bookcase close at hand and, re- 
solving to return it the next morning, turned to a 
good-night romp with the Volsung. We tried 
several new games without winning much popular 
applause. He was a failure as Wolf at the Door, 
because he barked so gleefully for admittance to 
the room where Joy-of-LIfe was brushing her 



GROWING UP 45 

mother's beautiful white hair and was so welcome 
when he came bursting in; nor did he shine as 
Mother Hubbard's dog, for his friend in the 
kitchen, Cecilia, who never let her cupboard go 
bare, had just filled the doughnut jar. So we 
practiced in secret for a few minutes on "a poetic 
recital" of Hickory Dickory Dock and then came 
forth to electrify the household. Taking a cen- 
tral seat, I repeated those talismanic syllables, at 
whose sound Sigurd jumped upon me, climbed up 
till his forepaws rested on the high top of the 
chair, in graphic illustration of the way the mouse 
ran up the clock, emitted an explosive bark when, 
shifting parts at a sudden pinch, he became for 
an instant the clock striking one, and then scram- 
bled down with alacrity, a motion picture of the 
retreating mouse. This was no small intellectual 
exercise for a collie, and at the end of our one 
and only public performance he broke away and 
squeezed himself under the sofa, where he lay 
rubbing his poor, overwrought noddle against the 
coolest spot on the wall. 

His mental energies had revived by morning 
and apparently he wanted to review his Hickory 
Dickory Dock, for he was in my study earlier 



46 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

than I and there, from all the rows of books on 
all the open shelves, he must needs pick out 
Mother Goose, even that unique copy de luxe. 
When I came in, there was Sigurd outstretched 
on his favorite rug, beside my^ desk, with the book 
between his forepaws, ecstatically engaged in 
chewing off one corner. 

My gasp of horror brought Joy-of-Life speed- 
ily to the scene, and Sigurd, instantly aware that 
he had committed a transgression beyond prece- 
dent, slid unobtrusively away, his penitent tail 
tucked between his legs. We were too keenly 
concerned over the injury done to remember to 
punish him, but no further punishment than our 
obvious distress was needed. Never again would 
Sigurd touch a book or anything resembling a 
book. He had discovered, once for all, that he 
had no taste for literature. 

"What can you do?" asked Joy-of-Life, dis- 
tractedly trying to wipe that pulpy corner dry with 
her napkin. "This rich binding is ruined, but the 
margins are so broad that Sigurd — O Sigurd! — 
has not quite chewed through to the print.'* 

"Nothing but make confession in sackcloth and 
ashes and pay what I have to pay," I answered 



GROWING UP 47 

gloomily. Then a wicked impulse prompted me 
to add: 

"Of course, since it's your dog that has done 
the damage '' 

"Sigurd is our dog," hastily interposed Joy-of- 
Life. "I give you half of him here and now, and 
we'll divide the damage." 

So as I went in to inflict this shock upon the 
kind librarian I was not without a certain selfish 
consolation, for if I should have to pay over all 
my bank account, I would be getting my money's 
worth. The librarian bent his brows over that 
mangled volume, listened severely to my abject 
narration and not until his eye-glasses hopped off 
his nose did I realize that he was convulsed with 
laughter. 

"What can I do?" I asked, too deeply contrite 
to resent his mirth. 

He wiped his eyes, replaced his glasses, exam- 
ined the book once more. 

"Weill" he replied in a choking voice. "If it 
were possible to replace this volume, I should 
have to require you to do so at whatever cost. 
But there is no other copy to be had. Its ^Esthetic 
value is gone beyond repair. The text, fortu- 



48 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

nately, is intact. We shall have to cut the pages 
down to the print and bind them into plain covers, 
A pity, but it can't be helped. The circumstances 
do not seem to call for a fine, but the rebinding 
will cost you, I regret to say, twenty-five cents.*' 

Choosing to deal generously with Joy-of-Life, 
I paid it all. 

Although Sigurd's golden coat seemed but the 
outer shining of the gladness that possessed him, 
he had his share of the ills that flesh is heir to, 
the most serious being a well-nigh fatal attack of 
distemper. With human obtuseness, we did not 
realize at first that our collie was sick. We heard 
him making strangling sounds and thought he had 
swallowed too big a piece of bone. We started 
out, that Sunday afternoon, on a seven-mile walk, 
partly for the purpose of exercising Sigurd, and 
were a bit hurt by his most unwonted lack of en- 
thusiasm. Instead of multiplying the miles by 
his usual process of racing in erratic circles around 
and around us and dashing off on far excursions 
over the fields on either side, he trotted soberly 
at heel, like the well-trained dog he never was. 
He moped, tail hanging, ears depressed, and soon 
began to fall behind. At the halfway turn he lay 



GROWING UP 49 

down and, for a time, flatly refused to budge. 
We laughed at his new game of Lazy Dog and 
relentlessly whistled him along. We were almost 
home, having passed through the village square, 
Sigurd lagging far in the rear, when a notorious 
bloodhound, out for his weekly constitutional, 
broke away from the steel chain by which his 
master was holding him and charged on our big 
puppy. Sigurd ran for his life, but the fleeter 
hound was close upon him. There were knots of 
men loafing about the square and, waiting for 
the next trolley car, there stood among them an 
old dame gayly attired in the colors of her native 
Erin. Sigurd's limited range of experience had 
led him to regard men either as secondary crea- 
tures who did what they were bid by the all-potent 
Lady of Cedar Hill or as parlor and piazza orna- 
ments enveloped in an unpleasant odor of to- 
bacco. His peril called for strong protection, so, 
as we were still too distant, he took refuge behind 
the voluminous sea-green skirts of that decent 
Irish body and, dodging skillfully as she twirled 
and whirled, kept her as a buffer between himself 
and his enemy. Screeching to all the saints for 
deliverance, she was still striving in vain to escape 



50 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

from her awful position, when the owners of the 
dogs came panting up. The bloodhound's master 
collared him, none too soon, and beat him so sav- 
agely with the chain that we turned away from 
the sight to sympathize with Sigurd's involuntary 
defender and help her adjust her grass-green bon- 
net and veil. As for Sigurd, he had flashed out 
of the picture, but we found him at home, lying 
inert, exhausted, refusing water and biscuit, in- 
different to bones. He sniffed regretfully at his 
Sunday dinner, but left it untasted. 

An hour or two before dawn, simultaneously 
awakened by the sound of desperate coughing, 
Joy-of-Life and I met on the stairs and hurried 
down to find a croupy puppy, who, in his emer- 
gency, had again bitten his leash in two and 
climbed into his favorite — ^because forbidden — 
easy chair. As we leaned over him, Sigurd put up 
a paw to each of us, his suffering eyes expectant of 
relief. But we could devise no effectual help, and 
the veterinary, called in as early as we dared, 
regarded the invalid as a dangerous animal and 
handled him so roughly that, the moment Sigurd 
found himself released, he slipped out of the 
house and across the road to Nellie. Sorely dis- 



GROWING UP 51 

appointed In us, he tried to hide his yellow tower- 
ing bulk on the other side of that grizzled little 
spaniel and waited, an exile from home, until the 
doctor had driven away. 

For weeks we had a sick collie on our hands. 
He dreaded food and would squeeze himself into 
all impossible places when he saw either one of 
us coming with the prescribed "nourishment." As 
for medicine, he contracted that autumn an aver- 
sion to bottles which he never overcame. Years 
afterward, if Sigurd, about to enter a room, 
stopped short on the threshold and turned abrupt- 
ly away, we looked around for the bottle. 

One morning the gasps were very feeble. The 
veterinary told us the end was at hand. We took 
our earth-loving collie out from his dark hospital- 
nook In the house and laid him down among the 
asters and goldenrods on the wild land at the 
rear. The Lady of Cedar Hill had come over to 
see him once more. He was lying so still that 
we thought he would not move again, but at the 
sound of that beloved voice Sigurd stirred a feeble 
tail and breathed a ghostly echo of his lyric cry. 
Faint and hoarse though It was, there was the old 
glad recognition in it, and his first mistress, for- 



i 



52 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

getting her intended precautions for the dogs at 
home, knelt down beside her Njal, comforting 
him with tender strokes and soft, caressing words. 
From that hour he began to mend, but so slowly 
that we were anxious about him all winter. Cruel 
pains would suddenly dart through him and he 
could never understand where they came from nor 
who did it. We would hear the sharp, distinctive 
cry that meant one of those pangs and then see 
Sigurd stagger up from his rug or cushion, look 
at it with deep reproach and cross to the furthest 
comer of the room. Once such a shoot of pain 
took him as he was standing by Joy-of-Life's gen- 
tle mother, his head propped on her knee, and the 
air of incredulous grief with which he drew back 
and gazed at her smote her to the soul. It was 
a matter of days before he could be coaxed to 
come to her again. 

One of the discoveries of Sigurd's illness was 
the heart of our Swedish maid, Cecilia. Fresh 
from Ellis Island, buxom, comely, neat as a 
scoured rolling-pin, she regarded us with no more 
feeling than did her molding-board. We intro- 
duced her to the ways of an American household; 
we helped her with the speaking of English; we 



GROWING UP 53 

paid her wages ; we were, in short, her Plymouth 
Rock, on which she stepped to her career in the 
New World. Best of all, we were palates and 
stomachs on which to try her sugary experiments, 
for it was her steadfast ambition to become an 
artist in dough with the view of securing a lucra- 
tive position as a pastry cook. However much 
we might further her own interests, her imper- 
turbable coolness made it clear that as fellow- 
creatures we were nothing, but she humored every 
whim of that sick puppy, even letting him lie in 
her immaculate pantry when the restless fancy 
took him. Her love was lasting, too, for al- 
though, as soon as we had suffered her apprentice- 
ship and begun to enjoy her perfected craft, she 
ruthlessly left us for ^'a hotel yob," she persisted 
for several years in sending Sigurd a dog-picture 
postcard every Christmas. We always gave him 
the cards, telling him they came from his friend 
Cecilia, and he pawed them politely, but inwardly 
deemed them a poor substitute for the cakes, tarts, 
puffs and crinkle-pastes of many curious flavors 
that had, for one brief season, made our At 
Homes famous in our "little academe," dropping 



I 



54 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

delicious flakes for a thrifty tongue to garner 
under the table. 

The distemper finally passed off in a trailing 
effect of St. Vitus' dance, which, again, our 
afflicted collie could not understand. On our 
springtide walks, his head, as he trotted in front, 
would suddenly be twitched to one side, as if we 
had jerked it by a rein. Apparently he thought 
we had, for invariably he came running back to 
see what we wanted of Sigurd. 

The final, enduring result of this hard experi- 
ence was an assured devotion. Sigurd had geni- 
ally accepted us from the first as his people, but 
now, through the suffering and weakness, he had 
come to know us as his very own. The lyric cry 
still belonged to high romance, but after all those 
piteous weeks when he found his only comfort in 
lying close beside our feet — even, in extremity, 
upon them — ^he reserved certain welcomes and 
caresses for us alone. Ours was the long, silent 
pressure of the golden head against the knee and, 
in time of trouble, the swift touch of the tongue 
upon clouded faces, and ours the long, shining, 
intimate gaze that poured forth imperishable loy- 
alty and love. 



LADDIE 

Lowly the soul that waits 
At the white, celestial gates, 
A threshold soul to greet 
Beloved feet 

Down the streets that are beams of sun 
Cherubim children run; 
They welcome It from the wall ; 
Their voices call. 

But the Warder saith: "Nay, this 
Is the City of Holy Bliss. 
What claim canst thou make good 
To angelhood?" 

"Joy," answereth It from eyes 
That are amber ecstasies, 
Listening, alert, elate. 
Before the gate. 

Oh, hoiv the frolic feet 
On lonely memory beat! 
What rapture in a run 
'Tivixt snow and sun! 

"Nay, brother of the sod, 
What part hast thou in God? 
What spirit art thou of?" 

It answers: "Love," 



Lifting its head, no less 
Cajoling a caress, 
Our winsome collie wraith, 
Than in glad faith 

The door will open wide, 
Or kind voice bid: "Abide, 
A threshold soul to greet 
The longed-for feet." 

Ah, Keeper of the Portal, 
If Love be not immortal. 
If Joy be not divine, 
What prayer is minef 



THE CALL OF THE BLOOD 

"Come, brother; away!" 

Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing* 

Sigurd was not the only representative of his 
family in our favored town. His sister Hlldi- 
gunna, who might well be described in the words 
applied to Hlldigunna of the saga as "one of the 
fairest," was given to a comparatively remote 
household in Wellesley Hills from which — alas! 
— she soon was stolen and spirited away to fates 
unknown. But his brother Hrut, a name speedily 
changed by his new owners to Laddie, took up 
his happy abode at The Orchard, not half a mile 
from us. These owners, returning from one of 
their many holidays abroad, had found on ship- 
board the Lady of Cedar Hill, on her way back 
from Norway. Of course she told them about 
the ten puppies and of course she promised them 
one. 

Reared in the best traditions of New England, 
these travelers had already achieved an ideal suc- 

57 



58 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

cess as founders and directors of a famous school 
for girls and had retired from active labors to a 
tranquil home whose broad Colonial porches were 
screened with "white foam flowers" of the clema- 
tis. They were Neighbors par excellence, so be- 
loved, so leaned upon, so beset with callers and 
"old girls," with church committees and town 
committees, with causes and confidences, that they 
literally had to go to Europe to secure an occa- 
sional rest. And it was charming to see how their 
modest dignity and winsome graciousness received 
due meed of honor the Old World over, from 
titled personages of London toi the very cab- 
drivers of Florence, whom they believed to be 
"honorable men" and were undoubtedly cheated 
less for so believing. Hard, shrewd faces of 
Paris pensions and Swiss hotels softened in their 
presence, and even the severe old Scotch dame 
who rated them roundly for gadding about the 
globe instead of having married and reared a 
freckled family, like hers, was moved to add: 
"But I mak nae doobt ve are mooch respectet 
where ye cam fram." She would have been con- 
firmed in this amiable concession if she could have 
seen how their return was a village jubilee and 



THE CALL OF THE BLOOD 59 

how all our accumulated joys and sorrows trooped 
in at once through their open doors. They were 
Ladies of rare and precious quality, with a touch 
of precise, old-fashioned elegance, which made 
one frank admirer exclaim: *'But they are like 
finest china, like porcelain, like Sevres, There is 
nothing so exquisite left on earth. They are 
classics." Most eminently of all, they were Sis- 
ters. A childhood of strange peril and suffering. 
In which their hearts clung so close together that 
they grew into one, had fitted naturally dissimilar 
natures into an utter harmony of desire and deed. 
Nobody ever thought of one without the other. 
Not Castor and Pollux shine with a more closely 
related and serener light. 

The Sisters hardly waited for our first tumult 
of greetings to subside before, on a September 
afternoon as quietly radiant as their own faces, 
they drove over to Cedar Hill to see what they 
described as "ten little fluffy balls, only just large 
enough to wriggle." The choice of their collie 
^they left to the giver. It was not determined 
then, but early In April they had a message setting 
the day on which they were to "come for Hrut." 
I presume they kissed the telephone. At all 



6o SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

events, they went with glad alacrity. As the door 
opened to admit them, a beautiful little collie, 
pure white save for touches of a rich golden 
brown on the ears, on the fall of the tail and on 
the top of his nobly carried head, ran to meet 
them and sprang into the outstretched arms of 
the foremost, cuddling there as if he knew that 
he had found his Earthly Paradise. 

His mistress had followed directly after him, 
aglow with pride in the grace of his welcome. 

"But this one cannot be ours, — he Is too love- 
ly," exclaimed the Sister who was already clasp- 
ing him tight. 

"Yes," smiled the Lady of Cedar Hill, "this 
one Is yours," and the puppy acquiesced with wag- 
ging tail and lapping tongue and every collie cour- 
tesy. 

From the first a delicate little fellow, the long 
drive back made him 111, but he never gave, then 
or later, the least sign of homesickness, settling 
at once with aristocratic ease into the comforts 
and privileges of his new environment and lavishly 
returning love for love. 

The Sisters, as well as the elder Cousin who 
dwelt with them, were "lovers of all things alive," 



THE CALL OF THE BLOOD 6i 

from bishops and other dignitaries, who paid them 
appreciative homage, to the South Sea Islanders, 
of whose costumes they disapproved but to whom, 
from babyhood up, they had helped send mission- 
aries. The grimiest urchin in town would grin 
confidentially as he touched his cap to them, and 
their sympathy overflowed all local limits to child- 
hood everywhere. Little cripples were the spe- 
cial objects of their care and tenderness. Of 
birds and beasts they were spirited champions. 
No man dared whip his horse if they were in 
sight. One of the Sisters had a magic pen, and 
many of her stories, whimsical and wise, carried 
an appeal for human gratitude toward the do- 
mestic animals who spend their patient strength 
in human service, and for friendliness toward all 
these sensitive fellow-creatures, our brief com- 
panions on a whirling star. The quadrupeds must 
have passed on from one to another the glad tid- 
ings of these Ladies of Lovingkindness, for many 
a hungry and thirsty cur sought the hospitalities 
of their kitchen, and stray cats, forsaken by sel- 
fish owners on vacation, used their piazza and 
even their parlor as a summer hotel. Early one 
July morning I was starting out for the col- 



62 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

lege grounds on the search for a wretched mon- 
grel that, having appeared from nowhere In the 
spring term, as dogs will, had become a cheerful 
hobo of the campus, living sumptuously through 
unlimited attendance on the out-of-door luncheon 
parties of the village students. A Commencement 
auto had broken one of his legs and frightened 
him into hiding, and now the ebb of all that girl 
life which had fed and petted him and the dis- 
appearance of chance bones from the closed back 
doors of the dormitories had brought upon the 
college, I was informed by special delivery letter 
from an indignant alumna, "the disgrace of leav- 
ing one of God's creatures to suffer slow starva- 
tion." Old experience led me, before setting 
forth to the rescue, to telephone the Sisters and 
ask if they had any news of this divine vagabond. 
"Yes, indeed,'* rang back a cheery voice. "He 
Is breakfasting with us now on the porch. He 
came limping up the walk just as the bell rang, 
exactly as if he had been invited. Such a pleasant 
dog In his manners, though dreadfully thin and — 
It's not his fault, poor dear — so dirty! I have 
just been calling Dr. Vet. to come and see what 
can be done for that poor leg." 



THE CALL OF THE BLOOD 63 

Of course Laddie was not their first dog. The 
checks of the school are sjtill stamped with the 
head of Don, their black Newfoundland, who had 
a passion for attending the morning service in 
the school hall and nipping the heels of the kneel- 
ing girls. In the repeating of the Lord's Prayer 
he would join with a subdued rumble, doubtless 
acceptable to his Creator, but when shut out from 
the sacred exercises, he would howl under the 
windows an anthem of his own that offended both 
Heaven and earth. 

In the inexorable process of the years, Don 
grew old, becoming a very Uncle Roly-Poly, but 
he was only loved the more. A cherished legend 
of the school relates how he was sleeping on his 
rug by the bed of one of his mistresses on a winter 
night, dreaming a saintly dream of chasing cats 
out of Paradise, when some real or fancied noise 
awoke him and, the faithful gardian of the school, 
he rushed through the low, open window and out 
upon the piazza roof, barking his thunderous 
warning to all trespassers. But he was still so 
bewildered with sleep that his legs ran faster than 
his mind and, before he knew it, he had pitched 
off the edge of that icy roof and was floundering 



64 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

in the snow beneath, the most astonished dog that 
ever bayed the moon. What happened to him 
then Is supposed to have been related by Don 
himself : 

**My howls dismayed the starry skies, 

The Great and Little Dippers, O! 
Till came an angel in disguise, 

In dressing gown and slippers, O! 
I staggered up the steepy stair; 

She pushed me from behind, Boix> nvonju! 
She tended me with mickle care, 

winsome womankind! Bo'uj wow/ 
She bathed my brow and bruised knee. 

1 only whined the louder, O! 
She murmured: 'Homeopathy! 

I'll give dear Don a powder,' 0! 
And may I be a pink-eyed rabbit 

If she chose not from her stock, Boiv wow/ 
FOR PERSONS OF A GOUTY HABIT 

WHO'VE HAD A NERVOUS SHOCK. £ow wow.'" 

Other dogs had come after, notably Cardigan, 
a stately St. Bernard, who made the fatal mis- 
take of biting a pacifist, but Laddie, the only real 
rival of Don In the Sisters* affections, was the 
crown of their delight In doghood. 

Sigurd had been with us only a few days wheii 
we took him over to see his brother, already for 
nearly three months a resident at The Orchard. 
We found Laddie, slender, white and dainty, 



THE CALL OF THE BLOOD 65 

quite at home on the luxurious drawing-room 
sofa. 

^Tm stronger than you,'* growled Sigurd, but 
Laddie, always the gentlest and sweetest tempered 
of collies, acquiesced so pleasantly that it was an 
amicable meeting. At the first hint of a second 
growl, Laddie gave up the place of honor to his 
guest. 

Of course we remonstrated, admonished Sigurd 
and urged the accommodating host, whose good 
manners delighted the Sisters, to jump back, which 
he did, tucking himself unobtrusively into the fur- 
ther corner of the sofa. Sigurd immediately 
claimed that corner, which Laddie yielded to him 
with unruffled magnanimity, crossing over to the 
other. Sigurd promptly changed his mind again, 
pushing Laddie, this time a little Inclined to de- 
mur, down to the floor. Unable to devise a plan 
by which he could curl into both corners at once, 
Sigurd stretched himself out at full length, doing 
his best to reach from end to end of the sofa, 
while Laddie, closely copying the attitude of this 
arrogant big brother, lay along the rug below. 
Scandalized by Sigurd's conduct, we would have 
removed him from his usurped throne In short 



66 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

order, but the Sisters, rejoicing in the perfection 
of Laddie's social graces and secretly convinced 
of their collie's moral superiority to ours, would 
not allow any interference with the visiting 
puppy's comfort. 

That freedom of the sofa was precious to 
Sigurd's pride and by repeated efforts he tried to 
convince his obtuse mistresses that he was en- 
titled to the same privilege at home. But Joy- 
of-Life, who did not believe in "pampering pets,'* 
stood firm. There was one evening, in particular, 
when Sigurd jumped up on our living-room lounge 
some score of times, keeping all the while a chal- 
lenging eye on her, and just as many times was 
ignominiously tumbled off. When she finally took 
possession herself, laughing at his discomfiture, 
he banged his way out into the kitchen and went 
down with a thump on the bare floor, hoping that 
we would hear how hard it was and realize how 
sorely poor Sigurd was abused. Finding that no 
apologies were forthcoming, he bounded to the 
front door, barked his orders to have it opened 
and shot out into the dark. Within five minutes 
the familiar tinkle called us to the telephone and 



THE CALL OF THE BLOOD 67 

over the wire flowed the blithe voice of one of 
the Sisters. 

**I must tell you what a lovely call we are hav- 
ing from dear Sigurd. He barked to come in 
only a minute ago and went right up to the sofa 
and took it all for himself — oh, yes, our Cousin 
had been sitting there with Laddie, but they didn't 
mind at all—- and there he is now, making himself 
so charmingly at home, the beautiful boy. I do 
wish you could see him." 

^'PFe will/' responded Joy-of-Life, and off we 
started to chastise Young Impudence, whom we 
had begun to suspect of being a trifle self-willed; 
but when we arrived the Sisters would by no means 
consent to his overthrow. So there, while the 
chat went on, Sigurd lolled and sprawled, yawn- 
ing, stretching himself to an incredible length, 
rolling over on his back with paws held high as 
if to applaud his victory and continually turning 
up to Joy-of-Life eyes of such sparkling glee that 
her purposes of discipline melted in mirth. 

None the less, she was a match for him, resort- 
ing to strategy when she was forbidden the exer- 
cise of force. Calling Laddie to her, she began 
to stroke his nestling head. Instantly Sigurd, 



68 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

with a multitudinous flourish^ of legs that might 
have moved a centipede to envy, flung himself off 
the sofa and roared imperiously at the front door: 

*'Open this, Somebody, and be quick about it, 
too. Time to be off. Oh, come along. Folks. 
YouVe no need to pat any dog but me. Good- 
night, Lovely Ladies. S'long, Lad. See you to- 
morrow in the gloaming." 

And unless we kept a strict watch, so he would. 
How often, while surveying from our west porch, 
with Sigurd demurely sitting up between us, the 
last faint flushes of the sunset sky, from across 
the road there would be suddenly visible against 
the dusk a presence like a celestial apparition, so 
white and hushed it was, the shining figure, the 
lifted, listening head! And in the fraction of a 
second, even while we were catching at his collar, 
off would go Sigurd with a great leap, and away 
the brother collies would tear on a mighty run 
that kept two households anxious far into the 
night. There was nothing celestial about their 
behavior. 

These lawless excursions often culminated in 
garbage-pail raids, debauches from which the 
young prodigals would sneak home, abashed with 



THE CALL OF THE BLOOD 6$ 

nausea. Once in a Commencement season we re- 
turned late in the evening, with a guest, from the 
high solemnity of the President's Reception, to 
find our hall strewn with Jonah strips of ham- 
rind and junks of pumpkin. Our guest was a bril- 
liant, worldly being, a very dragon-fly of swift- 
ness and gleam, and there she stood, exquisitely 
gowned in rose-red under lace whose color was 
that of moonlight seen through thin clouds, be- 
holding our culprit, who an hour before had been 
exultantly ranging a world of mysterious and in- 
finite adventure, flattened contritely in the midst 
of his enormities. 

"How human I** was her only comment. 

Often they came back Injured, with bitten ears, 
scratched faces, bleeding feet, and pretended to 
be worse off than they were, so as to divert our 
reproaches into pity. Sigurd limped home one 
dawn with a cruelly torn claw and lay all day in 
a round clothes-basket, to which he had taken a 
fancy, curled up like a yellow caterpillar and 
sleeping like a dormouse. But when I was sit- 
ting on the piazza steps that evening, putting a 
fresh bandage on the claw, while Sigurd, almost 
too feeble to stir, watched the process with 



70 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

pathetic eyes, a blanched sprite glistened by, only 
a white motion through the dark, and In an in- 
stant the Invalid had sped away, bandage trailing, 
to be wicked all over again. 

No matter how often the four mistresses agreed 
that discipline required doors to be shut against 
the truants till daybreak, on these nights of their 
escapes ours were light slumbers that a pleading 
whine too easily broke and many were the tiptoe 
journeys down derisively creaking stairs to let the 
wanderers In. The next day such lame, dirty, sub- 
dued, meek-minded stay-at-homes as our collies 
were ! It was hard to scold them properly when 
they rolled over on their backs and presented ach- 
ing stomachs to be comforted. But sometimes 
these stampedes took place by day, for whenever 
they met out-of-doors these brothers, otherwise 
fairly obedient, would disregard all human com- 
mands for the authoritative call of the blood and 
dart away side by side like arrows shot from a 
single bow. The sins that neither would commit 
alone they reveled in without scruple when they 
were together. From all over town we heard of 
our paragons as chasing cats, jumping at horses' 
heads, over-running gardens and upsetting chil- 



THE CALL OF THE BLOOD 71 

dren. One sedate young woman on whom they 
leaped, entreating her to play with them, sent In 
a substantial bill to "the owner of the dog that 
tore my dress." When we Inquired whether It 
was the golden collie or the white that did the 
damage she coldly replied that "the animals were 
so mixed up" she couldn't tell whether It was "the 
brown one or the drab," — ^^to such a condition had 
a bath of mud brought our dandles. One mother 
sternly confronted us with a weepy little boy who 
complained that "zem two dogs made me frow 
sticks for 'em all the way home from school an' 
my arm's most bwoke with tiredness." 

I remember clearly one typical escapade. It had 
snowed for three successive days and nights. Joy- 
of-LIfe was away In Washington, reading a 
learned paper before some convention of econo- 
mists. Her mother passed the shut-in hours pa- 
tiently by the fireside, meditating with disapproval 
on Dante's Inferno which I was reading to her, 
at intervals, for cheer during her daughter's ab- 
sence. Sigurd was spoiling for a romp. At last, 
in desperation, he amused himself by eating every- 
thing he came across, — a tube of paste, a roll of 
tissue paper, one of his own ribbons. I saw the 



72 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

latter end of the ribbon disappearing into his 
mouth and sprang to seize it, meaning to drag the 
rest out of his inner recesses, but Sigurd secured 
It by a furious gulp and capered away in triumph. 
At last the flakes had ceased falling, the snow 
plow had struggled through and, yielding to the 
big puppy's desperate urgency, I took him out to 
walk, following after the plow between glitter- 
ing walls as high as my shoulder. At a turn in 
the road, I caught sight, across the level expanse, 
of the Younger Sister exercising an invisible Lad- 
die. Suddenly there appeared above the parapet 
the tips of two golden-brown ears, pricked up in 
eager inquiry. Sigurd, overtopped by our own 
wall, could not have seen them, but with one tre- 
mendous lurch he was up^ and out, wallowing 
madly through the drifts to meet Laddie, who, 
like a miniature snow plow, was already break- 
ing a way toward him. The collies touched noses 
and, ranging themselves side by side, plunged off 
into that blank of white, utterly deaf to the human 
calls that would check the onward impulse of their 
sacred brotherhood. 

They had another glorious run two days later, 
when the snow was frosted and could bear their 



I 



THE CALL OF THE BLOOD 73 

weight. Mad with mischief, they raced miles on 
miles, — to Oldtown and beyond, barking at every 
man they met and leaping at every horse; they 
dashed into Waban Way and out over the spa- 
cious Honeymoon estates; they scampered hither 
and thither across the three hundred acres of the 
campus; they careered back and forth over the 
frozen lake and challenged the college girls to a 
rough-and-tumble in the snow. Meanwhile the 
Younger Sister and I, seriously alarmed lest some 
nervous horse, startled by their antics, should 
bring about disaster, had taken a sleigh and gone 
forth in pursuit. Disquieting news of them kept 
coming to us as we drove. 

"Two young collies? I should say so. I met 
them an hour ago, way over in Dover. They both 
jumped at my old Dobbin's head, barking all 
Hallelujah." 

"O yes, IVe seen two runaway dogs. Shep- 
herds, white and fawn. They were chasing an 
express team down by Eliot Oak. The driver was 
standing up and whipping out at them for all he 
was worth." 

Presently we came on their fresh tracks in the 
snow, tracks of running feet always side by side, 



74 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

until at last we overtook the truants. There they 
were, barking in duet, hoarse but happy, trying to 
scramble up an icy telephone pole after a spitting 
cat. They bounded to greet us and followed the 
sleigh home like lambs. The Sister, secretly con- 
demning Sigurd as the dangerous misleader of her 
angel Laddie, assured them firmly that they were 
never to play together again. 

Sigurd still had so much frolic In him that, 
when we had arrived at our own door, he coaxed 
me to stay outside and throw sticks for him from 
the piazza into the drifts. But soon I noticed red 
touches on the snow and, bringing him in, found 
that his feet were ice-cut and bleeding. I told him 
sternly that such were his just deserts and he 
rolled over on his back, holding up his paws to 
be healed. While I was anointing them with 
vaseline, a vain remedy because of the avidity 
with which Sigurd licked it off, I discovered that 
he had lost, in his wild whirl, the ornamental blue- 
bead collar, wrought for him by a student devotee 
at the cost of many patient hours. When I had 
done what he would let me for his feet and he 
had curled up cosily in his basket, I solemnly set 
about my duty of rebuking him, but the youngster 



THE CALL OF THE BLOOD 75 

was too tired for rhetoric. With an apologetic 
grunt, he Instantly fell fast asleep. Being In- 
wardly persuaded that Laddie was chiefly to 
blame, I left my misguided Innocent to his repose. 
The next afternoon he limped demurely down 
the hill and, In about two minutes, was on The 
Orchard porch, exchanging vociferous greetings 
with Laddie, but for once his effrontery failed of 
its effect. Steeling their hearts, the Sisters refused 
to let the outside collie In or the Inside collie out. 
Sigurd, always most dignified when his feelings 
were hurt, rose against one of the drawing-room 
windows, took a long look at the sofa and van- 
ished Into the early winter twilight, not to be seen 
again by our anxious eyes for thIrty-sIx hours. It 
was just on the silver edge of the third day that a 
wistful woof on our porch sent four hastily slip- 
pered feet skurrying to the door. Such a fam- 
ished, unkempt, exhausted collie as stood wagging 
there I His coat was grimy, his ruff gray and 
tangled, and from his collar, drawn cruelly tight, 
dragged a cumbrous length of Iron chain. The 
Sisters, who, suffering all the pangs of contrition, 
had been no less eager than we In prosecuting the 
search, hurried over (without Laddie) straight 



76 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

from their breakfast table, and one of them, fling- 
ing her arms about Sigurd as he nestled in the 
forbidden easy-chair — for he never missed the op- 
portunity to wrest some special privilege out of 
any emotional crisis — sobbed with relief. Spent 
as he was, the collie licked her cheek, forgiving 
and consoling, even while his happy, love-beam- 
ing eyes could hardly hold themselves open. If 
an attempt had been made to kidnap him,^ Sigurd's 
strength and often proved cleverness in extricat- 
ing himself from bonds had stood him in good 
stead. More fortunate than his sister Hildigunna 
and than another high-spirited sister, Unna, like- 
wise supposed to have been been stolen — ^though 
in the saga Unna ran away from her home (and 
husband), — Sigurd, if he could not break the 
chain of captivity, had managed to pull it out of 
its staple and lug it along with him back to free- 
dom. 

By an assiduous use of the telephone to the 
effect, *'We are taking Laddie for a walk. Will 
you please keep Sigurd in?" or ^'Sigurd has just 
started off in your direction. Where's Laddie?" 
we kept a certain check on their escapades for the 
rest of that winter, but they contrived to meet at 



THE CALL OF THE BLOOD 77 

some secret rendezvous in apple-blossom time and 
came home panting and jubilant, with pink and 
white blossoms all over their coats. Sigurd ap- 
parently liked the effect, considering himself a 
King of the May, for no sooner were those petals 
brushed off than he frisked out and rolled over 
in the tulip-bed to accumulate some more. On the 
few occasions when our runaways, oozing through 
the merest cracks of doors, gave us the slip, we 
dropped all minor occupations and hunted them 
down, calling In the aid of an amused liveryman, 
an Irish neighbor whose white hairs thatched a 
pate where wit and kindliness kept house together. 

*'It's the goolden dog y'are to me," he would 
say to Sigurd. "Many's the good dollar I've 
made out o' yez thralpsin's and throublln's." 

The Lady of Cedar Hill had given away to ap- 
preciative friends all the puppies save Gunnar, 
but several of them had homes nearby and she 
thought it would be pleasant to have a family re- 
union once a year, on their common birthday. 
One such gathering proved enough for all time. 

On a delectable autumn afternoon we set forth, 
just after luncheon. In a roomy surrey, The Sis- 
ters, Joy-of-Life, my nephew — then a wide-eyed 



78 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

small boy, now a surgeon working for the 
wounded in France, — and I, with Sigurd and 
Laddie racing alongside, to attend Gunnar's birth- 
day party. Six or seven of his brothers and sisters 
were assembled, but at this distance of time I can- 
not call the roll. Among them were probably 
Helga, who, becoming Lady Gwendolyn, lived to 
a reverend age; certainly Flosi, who returned 
from the new owner to Cedar Hill, where his 
frolicsome years were nine; perhaps Hauskuld, 
dearly beloved, who, like Sigurd, was tormented 
in hot weather by the aristocratic ailment of 
eczema, and perhaps Helgi, who, as far as the 
family record is known, outlived all his genera- 
tion, dying at the ripe age, for a high-bred collie, 
of thirteen. There was no receiving line and 
never a moment that afternoon when It was easy 
to distinguish them, for it was all one glorious 
scrimmage from arrival to departure. 

Ralph, growing more and more Inhospitable" 
with the years, had been locked up as a precau- 
tion against tragedy, and resplendent young Gun- 
nar, the host of the day, assailed his guests so 
violently that he, too, had to be put on his chain, 
where he alternately strained and sulked all the 



I 



THE CALL OF THE BLOOD 79 

afternoon. No wonder he never gave another 
party. But Dora, always bewitching in her ways, 
found the occasion entertaining and tolerated her 
children, if she could not be said to welcome them. 
Meanwhile, by unremitting vigilance on the part 
of masters and mistresses, the guests were re- 
strained from too furious attacks on one another, 
until the banquet, consisting of a row of extraordi- 
narily big and marrowy bones, was served. Each 
dog was instantly prompted by the Evil One to 
covet his neighbor's bone, but after a really mag- 
nificent display of authority on the part of their 
respective guardians, the raging bunch of white 
and sable was disentangled. Separated by wide 
distances, the collies, graceful figures lying on 
green lawn and bank, fell to their crunching in 
comparative peace, while Gunnar, spuming his 
own birthday dinner, roared grace from the end 
of his chain, with Ralph's gruff ainen coming down 
from the open windows of his prison chamber. 
I blush to record that Sigurd, having polished off 
his bone at top speed, proceeded without cere- 
mony to appropriate Laddie's. This was rescued 
and returned to its gentle owner, already so be- 
wildered by these social excitements that, when a 



8o SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

game of toss-and-catch followed the feast, Laddie 
bit the leg of the short-trousered small boy, my 
nephew, not unnaturally mistaking that long, thin, 
flourishing object for a stick. This regrettable 
incident, as the Dog Gazette would put it, broke 
up the party, but the distressed Sisters made such 
ample amends to the victim that he came to con- 
sider, as birthdays and Christmases rolled around, 
that scar on his calf one of his best assets. 

During the period of Sigurd's distemper and 
convalescence we took the utmost care, of course, 
to shut him away from Laddie, whose bonny 
brown head often appeared on the outside of one 
window or another, the shining eyes wistful for 
his playmate. 

On one occasion the contagious element in the 
disease stood us in good stead. Sigurd was bet- 
ter, but still so weak that the least of walks tired 
him out. We kept him off the highways, lest any 
germs yet lingering about him might bring dis- 
aster on other puppies, but thought we were safe 
in the woods behind the house. On a certain Sun- 
day afternoon I had coaxed Sigurd, by short 
stages, further than before. He had spent his 
little stock of strength and, with his usual eye 



THE CALL OF THE BLOOD 8i 

for becoming effects, had disposed himself to 
sleep under a white-blossoming wild cherry, — that 
exquisite springtide delight which the campaign 
against browntall and gypsy moth is fast banish- 
ing from eastern Massachusetts. Suddenly a 
group of young roughs from a neighboring fac- 
tory town burst through the brush, attended by 
a gaunt mastiff, and for the fun of the thing, jo- 
vially deaf to my remonstrances, proceeded to get 
up a dog fight, though the betting was monoto- 
nously one-sided. "Buster," obedient to command, 
approached growling and bristling, and Sigurd, 
who was never one to turn the other ear, trotted 
out with gallant readiness to meet an opponent 
who would have made an end of him with the first 
clinch. 

"Very well!" I said, blazing at those boyish 
rowdies, who may, by this time, have bloomed out 
into heroes and won the croix de guerre. "If you 
want your dog to sicken and probably die of dis- 
temper, set him on. This collie is full of It and 
will infect him at the first touch." 

Without staying to question my scientific ac- 
curacy, the hoodlums hastily called off their cham- 
pion, threatened me in uncivil terms with the 



82 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

police and the jail for bringing a distempered dog 
abroad and took themselves off to look for safer 
holiday sport. Sigurd thought he had frightened 
them away and swaggered home with a marked 
revival of spirits. 

When Dr. Vet at last pronounced all danger of 
contagion over, the Sisters, leaving Laddie behind, 
made a congratulatory call on our invalid, whose 
lyric cry, albeit hoarse and squeaky, shrilled to 
the Dogstar as he welcomed them, now climbing 
up to their shoulders in fervent embrace, now 
modulating his roundelay to the plaintive note as 
he tried his best to tell them what *Toor Sigurd" 
had suffered. They were sympathetic; they were 
intelligent; and tumbling into the forbidden easy 
chair, Sigurd made it clear to them, and they in 
turn made it clear to his dull mistresses, that his 
swollen throat could nowhere be so comfortable 
as here, where the chair-arm supported the chin. 
It was then that our last shred of arbitrary disci- 
pline gave way. Sigurd had won the throne of 
his ambition. In course of time, this became 
Sigurd's Chair, given over to his exclusive occu- 
pancy, scratched and rubbed and shabby, the nio^ 



THE CALL OF THE BLOOD 83 

disreputable and, to his mind, the most enjoyable 
of our furnishings. 

Laddie escaped the distemper, but of other mis- 
chances he had more than his share. He was 
scalded by his own dear Annie, against whom he 
had unluckily run when she was carrying a pitcher 
of boiling water; he was shot through the leg, as 
he was assisting in a midnight serenade given by 
the dogs of the neighborhood to a belle shut up 
in the house of her bad-tempered master; but the 
sorest pang of all was the departure of his mis- 
tresses for another year abroad. The Elder 
Cousin had gone on a longer journey; the corner 
by the hearth was lonely for the lack of that small 
gray figure, the hands so busy with their knitting, 
the face so shrewd and kindly; and all we village- 
folk called to express our sympathy and remained 
to burden theirs with long recitals of our various 
tribulations until the Sisters, utterly worn out, had 
again to seek solitude overseas. 

What to do with Laddie? Gunnar, disgusted 
enough at having Flosi back again, flatly avowed 
that he would not put up with another brother on 
the premises. Ralph, in the fullness of years, and 
little Dora, prematurely, had slipped away to 



84 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

Shadowland, bequeathing the care of Cedar Hill 
to Gunnar, who was keenly alive to his responsi- 
bilities. From one of our recent visits Sigurd had 
come back with a bleeding ear and a red blotch on 
the top of his head. So the farmhouse of the 
estate opened its doors to Laddie, but he had 
other views and, running away the first afternoon, 
made a valiant effort to get back to the Sisters. 
He took one wrong turn and was lost for a night 
and a day, but his rare beauty and appealing 
charm won him a friend who allowed him to fol- 
low her home, fed him, read his collar and soon 
made telephone connection with his distressed mis- 
tresses, already resolved to let their steamer go 
without them rather than sail in ignorance of 
Laddie's fate. They were stout-hearted enough, 
however, when they knew that he was found, to 
ask the Cedar Hill farmer to go and reclaim the 
stray, denying themselves and Laddie another 
farewell. 

We hoped that in the year's separation the two 
brothers would forget each other or, at least, out- 
grow their propensity to revert to the wild to- 
gether. It seemed the more likely because Laddie, 
always fragile, had suffered a severe attack of 



THE CALL OF THE BLOOD 85 

pneumonia at the farmhouse, and came back to 
the Sisters looking more like a white spirit than 
ever. But he took time, on arrival, only to greet 
his household saints and Indulge In a brief nap 
on the sofa before dashing off to find Sigurd. 
Away they went on an impassioned run, from 
which, seven hours later, Laddie came drooping 
home, and even Sigurd spent the next day curled 
up in his green easy chair, subdued and quiescent, 
looking like an illustration for "After the Ball.'* 
Although we kept what guard we could upon 
them, they managed to elude us several times that 
autumn, but after the first wild spurt they would 
run more slowly, Sigurd slackening his natural 
speed in order to keep side by side with Laddie, 
whose hard panting could be heard above the 
rustling of the autumn leaves through which they 
raced. The worry cow hooked us badly on Christ- 
mas day. Laddie, who had coughed all night, 
had to be coaxed to come out for a little walk 
after breakfast and was dragging behind the 
Younger Sister when, turning the corner of a 
bright barberry hedge, they came upon Sigurd, 
gorgeous In his new, upstanding bow of holly rib- 
bon. Hey, presto I Off they shot like young 



86 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

wolves on the trail. Under the starlight our tru- 
ant returned, a damp wisp hanging from his collar. 
That white, wavy front of his, so carefully 
groomed for the festal day, was all red and green 
from the holly ribbon that he had been chewing 
up for his Christmas dinner. As for poor Laddie, 
he was ill for a week, but rallied again, and, de- 
spite our doubled and redoubled vigilance, the 
brothers had still two or three runs together be- 
fore the end of February brought with it the end 
of Laddie's life. 

Beautiful being that he was, he had gladdened 
earth for Rve and a half years. If it is hard to 
believe in immortality, it is harder to understand 
how his Maker could cast away a spirit of such 
pure sweetness as Laddie's. Perhaps he ranges 
the celestial meadows now and has found out 
what King Lear wanted to know, — "the cause of 
thunder:'* For thunder was Laddie's terror. He 
could be quieted only by the Younger Sister, who, 
going to the piano, would play her loudest, while 
the trembling collie crouched against her feet. 

This second attack of pneumonia was relent- 
less. Laddie was not allowed to suffer it to the 



THE CALL OF THE BLOOD 87 

end, but was tenderly put to sleep. Shortly after, 
Sigurd trotted over to The Orchard of his own 
impulse and, without any of the customary lurk- 
ing and looking for Laddie, went straight in to 
the Sisters, licking their hands and pressing close 
against their knees. 

That afternoon a few of Laddie^s closest 
friends — though all the town loved Laddie — 
gathered about a little grave on The Orchard 
lawn, while the delicate Elder Sister, wrapped in 
a white shawl, with Sigurd, wearing a white rib- 
bon, close beside her for comfort, looked down 
on the scene from an open chamber window. In 
the group below, one of us after another quietly 
spoke of Laddie's gentleness and gladness and 
affection, of the happiness he had given and re- 
ceived. The Younger Sister read a lyric good- 
bye that the Elder Sister had written and thanked 
God, as simply as if He were standing in our 
midst, for all the joy of Laddie. Then we low- 
ered the box, dropping upon it the white rosebuds 
that the Dryad had sent and the white carnations 
that Jack's mistress had brought. When the 
earth went in, one voice said softly, "Dust to 



68 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

dust," but another responded clearly, "Love to 
love." All the while Sigurd's intent eyes and 
golden head peered from the window above and 
once he gave a short, troubled bark. 



SIGURD'S MEDITATIONS IN THE 
CHURCH-PORCH 

The gaze of a dog is blind 
To splendors of summit and sky, 

Ocean and isle, 
But never a painter shall find 
The beautiful more than I 

In my lady's smile. 

The thought of a dog is dim. 
Not even a wag he deigns 

To the wisest book. 
Philosophy dwells for him 
In loving the law that reigns 

In voice, in look. 

The heart of a dog is meek. 
He places his utter trust 

In a mortal grace, 
Contented his God to seek 
In a creature framed of dust 

With a dreaming face. 

The human is our divine. 

In the porch of the church, I pray 

For a rustling dress, 
For those dear, swift steps of thine, 
Whose path is my perfect way 

Of holiness. 



ADVENTURES 

"Puntarvolo. Is he religious? 

Gentleman. I know not what you call religious, but he goes 
to church, I am sure." 

Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour, 

The zest, the fun, the excitement Sigurd in- 
fused Into our human humdrum outwent all ex- 
pectation. I think It added a relish even to Joy- 
of-Life's devotions at the early service of St. An- 
drew's that a suppressed yelp and a vehement 
scamper might at any second denote Laddie's ap- 
pearance and Sigurd's Instant reversion from her 
pious attendant in the vestibule to a wild creature 
of enraptured speed. He opened our eyes to a 
new vision of the most familiar things. What 
we had considered merely gray squirrels were re- 
vealed, through his glorious campaign against 
them, as goblin banditti bent on insult and rob- 
bery. For on those enchanted autumn days, when 
we would be wandering through the rich-colored, 

spicy woods, where winds laughed among the 

90 



ADVENTURES gr 

branches and chased leaves bright as jewels down 
the air, these impertinent squirrels were always 
scolding overhead and dropping acorns on us. I 
remember one such stroll, when a falling chest- 
nut smacked Sigurd soundly on the nose. He at 
once attributed the indignity to the squirrels — 
quite unjustly this time — and made off in pursuit 
of a wily old fellow that whisked in and out among^ 
the slender birch boles and led him, as if for the 
mere sport of it, on a far chase. I was absorbed 
meanwhile in altruistic combat with a troop of 
ants, a foraging party returning to their hill- 
castle with a company of belated beetles as booty. 
As often as I brushed the ranks into confusion 
with a spray of goldenrod, it was astonishing to 
see how quickly the discomfited ants would rally 
and how immediately every one of the madly 
skurrying beetles — for their pitiless captors had 
deprived them of their wings — would be again a 
prisoner, surrounded In close formation by a 
marching escort. Looking up from this insect 
tragedy, I saw Sigurd tearing back with some- 
thing in his mouth that, for one horrified Instant, 
I thought was the slaughtered squirrel. It turned 
out to be my hat, which, blowing merrily away 



52 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

from the bramble whereon It was hung, had been 
captured by my friend in need, who proudly re- 
stored it, somewhat the worse for the manner of 
its rescue. Later on, in the hushed Indian sum- 
mer noons, Joy-of-Life and I would take our 
luncheon out into the woods, where our golden 
collie would roll over and over in a rustling bed 
of leaves much of his own color or of brown, 
fragrant pine-needles, his bright eyes always on 
the watch for any aggression from the peering 
citizens of the trees. 

The winter, however, was Sigurd's heroic sea- 
son. He had the soul of a helper, not of a pet, 
and longed for occupation, responsibility, service. 
His sentry duty at night, his guardianship in our 
walks, his herding of the family Into the dining- 
room three times a day with punctual solicitude, 
these were not enough. It was amusing and yet, 
in a way, touching to see with what strenuous 
earnestness he took upon himself the task of driv- 
ing the squirrels away from the bird boxes. For 
our neighbors, the *'shadowtaIls," as the Greeks 
called them, were so obtuse as to appropriate to 
their own comfort and convenience every pro- 
vision we made for the flying folk. We had put 



ADVENTURES &3 

up in the trees near the house a few bird palaces, 
variously named, according to the dominant in- 
terest of those whose respective windows over- 
looked them, Toynbee Hall, the Tabard Inn, the 
Waldorf-Astoria, the Mermaid Tavern ; but their 
bluebird tenants were soon ejected, and families 
of baby squirrels, for whose repose their parents 
busily chewed up mattresses of leaf and bark, were 
reared in those proud abodes. To this Sigurd 
had to submit, though he would lie for hours on 
the piazza, his chin on his paws, wondering why 
the Collie Creator, whom he probably took to be 
much like his adorable father Ralph, only a thou- 
sand times as big — for had not Sigurd heard in the 
skies the thunder of his bark? — denied to dogs 
the gift of climbing trees. But their attack on 
the food-boxes brought these pirates almost within 
Sigurd's reach. 

From several of the upper windows had been 
built out simple and practical feeding-shelves, — • 
shallow wooden boxes partitioned off by cross- 
pieces into some six or eight compartments. Here 
we would put out marrowbones, suet, shreds and 
scraps from the dinner-plates, nuts, acorns, pine- 
cones, grains, crumbs, fragments of cheese, and 



"54 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

here, all the long winter through, our welcome 
guests were chickadees, nut-hatches, tree spar- 
rows, downy woodpeckers, juncos, with an occa- 
sional fox sparrow or purple finch or flock of 
Canadian crossbills. Our unwelcome guests were 
English sparrows, of whom, however, we had but 
few and those of rather subdued deportment; blue 
jays, who would fly away with big pieces of meat 
or cocoanut, and the gray squirrels, who would 
come stealing softly down the edge of the case- 
ment and suddenly leap into the box. Here they 
would sit up on their haunches, defying us through 
the pane with hard, black eyes, and gobble till 
they could gobble no more. Then they would stuff 
their elastic cheeks almost to bursting and make 
off with their plunder only to be back again before 
the little birds, so long and so patiently waiting 
on the snowy branches of the nearest tree, had 
really settled down to enjoy the leavings. 

Sigurd instinctively understood that the little 
birds were guests — ^to the English sparrows he 
gave the benefit of the doubt — and that the blue 
jays and squirrels were intruders. On a keen 
winter day, when the boxes had been freshly 
iilled, he was indeed an overworked collie, scam- 



ADVENTURES 95 

paring from room to room and window to win- 
dow, barking furiously at the raiders. This vocif- 
erous warning that no trespassers were allowed 
sufficed for the blue jays, who would flap sullenly 
away, but the squirrels were quick to learn that a 
bark was not a bite. Shadowtail would only drop 
his nut and sit up erect and alert, his little fists 
pressed to his heart, his beady eyes staring 
straight against the dog's honest, indignant gaze. 
Seeing that his loudest roar had lost its terrors, 
Sigurd would leap up toward the window and give 
it a resounding thump with his paw. At first this 
new menace put the squirrels to precipitate re- 
treat. Ojff they went, nor stood upon the order of 
their going. A few minutes later, one shrewd 
little gray face after another would peer around 
the casement edge, but at the first view of that 
upright, shining figure, with the flowing snow- 
white ruff, mounting guard on chair or hassock, 
the goblin faces vanished. Sigurd was immensely 
proud of himself during this epoch of the war- 
fare. A very Casabianca in his firm conception of 
duty, only the most imperative summons could call 
him from his post. But when the squirrels had 
learned that the barrier between the collie and 



^ 



96 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

themselves was, though transparent, an effective 
screen, and would, as before, saucily plant them- 
selves in the middle of the box and resume the 
stuffing and pillaging process more diligently than 
ever, under his very eyes, Sigurd, frantic with 
fury, would beat an utterly tremendous tattoo 
upon the pane. Three times one January he 
crashed through the glass in one of my chamber 
windows, cutting his face and paws and subject- 
ing the room to a more Arctic ventilation than I 
cared for. On these occasions the squirrels saved 
themselves by prodigious leaps into the nearest 
tree and did not venture back while that jagged 
gap remained, — so satisfactory a result, from 
Sigurd's point of view, that he marveled at my 
folly in calling in a glazier to repair the damage. 
As the man was working at the window, Sigurd 
would look from him to me with a puzzled and 
reproachful expression accentuated by the long 
strips of court plaster across his nose. 

He had a vigorous ally in my mother, who 
brought her own bright wits to bear on the cir- 
cumvention of the enemy. She knitted a little 
bag, filled it with nutmeats and hung it from the 
middle sash outside the window, so that it dangled 



ADVENTURES 97 

halfway down In the open space which gave the 
squirrels no footing but delighted our winged pen- 
sioners. It was fun to see two spirited fluffs squar- 
ing at each other atop a lump of suet for the best 
chance to rise at the bag, till another plumy mid- 
get came fiercely down upon them and drove them, 
chirping remonstrance, off to the outer edges of 
the box. Then the newcomer, bristling with vic- 
tory, flew up and secured the most desirable posi- 
tion on that swinging dinner-pail, while the others, 
nudging and scrambling, sought for a footing on 
the further side. But the squirrels studied the 
situation from above and from below and pres- 
ently learned to run up the blind, make a sidelong 
leap to the bag and cling to It with all four legs 
and feet, while they gnawed through the threads 
until the goodies hterally poured Into their 
mouths. There they would cling and feast, while 
on the other side of the glass my mother and 
Sigurd, both of them sharply protesting and an- 
grily rapping the pane, held a Council of War. 
As a result, my mother bought two Iron sink-mops, 
wired them together and triumphantly fashioned 
a bag which even the strong teeth of the furry 
burglars, for all their persevering and Ingenious 



98 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

efforts, could not bite open. But the happy chick- 
adees and nut-hatches would perch there, by re- 
lays, all day long, thrusting their bills through 
the iron interstices and drawing out, bit by bit, the 
finely broken nutmeats. 

The blue jays were routed quite by accident. 
The support of my box, a strip of wood running 
from the underside of that little feeding table to 
the house wall, had loosened its lower nail, and 
one day, when some passing touch of grippe kept 
me in bed, with Sigurd sitting upright on a chair 
beside me, playing nurse, a plump jay lit heavily 
upon the edge of the shelf and screeched with 
fright as it shook and slid beneath him. He took 
to his glossy wings and, within five minutes, the 
oak hard by was alive with our whole colony of 
blue jays, all eying that box and deep in agitated 
discussion. At last one venturesome fellow struck 
boldly out and lit on it, only to feel It sway and 
sag and, with a shriek rivaling that of his pre- 
decessor, flapped up just in time to save himself, 
as he believed, from a terrific disaster. This per- 
formance was repeated twice more and then the 
whole blue jay crew abandoned, for the rest of 
the winter, not only their attacks on my particular 



ADVENTURES 99 

bird box, though its support was promptly made 
secure, but on all the bird boxes of the house. 
Sigurd and I were well content as we heard them 
croaking to one another, **A trap ! Jam my 
feathers, a hateful, human trap ! But they 
couldn't hoodwink us. Yah, yah, yah!'* 

The squirrels, however, continued to be Sig- 
urd's chief household care. Out of doors, too, he 
was forever chasing them, but never, to my knowl- 
edge, so much as brushed the tail of one. In his 
sleep, he often seemed to be dreaming of a squir- 
rel hunt, his feet running eagerly even while his 
body lay at full stretch upon the rug, and his 
breath coming in short pants. Sometimes he 
would howl in nightmare slumbers, but generally 
he appeared elate, climbing, perhaps, the trees of 
Dreamland, less slippery than our icy oaks, and 
driving out his enemies from their loftiest fast- 
ness. 

Sigurd bore no grudges and when, as the pussy- 
willows, anemones and violets, the robins and the 
orioles were bringing In the spring, he was called 
upon to adorn a blue jay funeral procession, he 
wore his black ribbon with decorum. The chief 
mourner, a little lad by name of Wallace, was 



100 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

one of our nearest neighbors and most honored 
friends. He had been much perturbed In spirit 
over the perils of the blue jay brood whose nurs- 
ery, so reckless were their parents, tilted precari- 
ously on a pine branch that overhung a ledge just 
beyond one end of Wallace's porch. He feared 
every wind would overthrow that nest, but when 
the shocking old mother, apparently In a fit of 
temper, deliberately pushed her children out her- 
self, and they fell, one by one, to instant death 
on the rock below, Wallace's grief and horror 
were too great for a child's good. His resource- 
ful father therefore proposed a grand funeral, as 
the only testimony of regard and regret that we 
could offer to the unlucky fledgelings, and Wal- 
lace, who was much preoccupied with his future 
career, having at one time planned to be a dentist 
in the forenoon, a musician In the afternoon, and 
an editor at night, entered with enthusiasm upon 
the duties of undertaker, sexton, and clergyman. 
Called upon for an anthem, I responded with a 
lament which Wallace found "too sad" to hear 
more than twice. On the second occasion it was 
intoned at the tiny grave, above which Sigurd 
drooped a puzzled head, not understanding a 



ADVENTURES loi 

game that had In it neither romp nor laughter. 
Though fond of Wallace, our collie's bearing 
toward small boys In general was not conspicuous 
for cordiality. Women he accepted as essential 
to the running of the universe; men — except for 
those vindictive monsters perched on express 
teams with long whips In hand — he regarded with 
amiable indifference; but about small boys he was 
dubious. Some of our rougher little neighbors 
had stoned and snowballed the new puppy. At 
Christmas we met that situation by converting 
Sigurd into Santa Claus, — dressing him up in holly 
ribbon and slelghbells and hanging on him the 
little gifts which we were in the way of taking 
about to the children on our hill. The immediate 
effect was excellent. Sigurd was thanked and 
patted and, in his pleasure at such appreciation, 
he would magnanimously lick the boyish hands 
that had been so often raised against him. One 
urchin was so impressed by a toy fire-engine that, 
at least through January, he touched his cap to 
"Mr. Sigurd" whenever they met; but with Fourth 
of July and Hallowe'en our troubles were all re- 
newed. Firecrackers and torpedoes arc so discon- 
certing to collie nerves that no normally bad boy 



I02 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

could resist setting them off under Sigurd's very 
nose, somersaulting with ecstasy to see his in- 
stantaneous bolt for home; while on Hallowe'en 
all the youngsters on the hill would call in a troop, 
weirdly disguised, swinging Jack-o'-Lanterns and 
banging, scraping, whistling, piping, on strange 
instruments not of music. On these distracting 
occasions Sigurd was ready to tear those giggling 
spooks to bits, and either Joy-of-Life or I had to 
hold him tight, while the other passed the cookies 
and candies for which our supernatural visitants 
had come. 

May Day was better fun for Sigurd. He 
quickly understood that the Maybasket chase was 
only a game and played it with a vim. But in 
general he did not care for festivals nor for any 
variation of the usual round. Just everyday liv- 
ing was joy enough for him. If Sigurd had made 
the calendar, the week would have been all Mon- 
days. Even Christmas puzzled more than it 
pleased him. Such a confusion of brown paper 
and tissue paper, such a flourishing of queer, 
lumpy stockings, such tangles of string, such ex- 
citement over objects that had no thrill for his 
inquiring nose I And for himself, the rubber cats 



ADVENTURES 103 

with gruesome squeaks Inside them, the mechani- 
cal beetles that shook his courage as they charged 
at him across the floor I He could not make it 
out. Once when all the people present were 
shouting with mirth over a new, preposterous 
game of cards, Sigurd quietly picked up from 
under the table a pack not yet called into service 
and carried It out into the kitchen, where he was 
presently discovered with one forefoot set on the 
cards tumbled about before him, while he gazed 
dejectedly down at them In a defeated effort to 
find out why they were amusing. And the Christ- 
mas parties, for which he had to be scrubbed until 
he shone like an Image of white and gold! And 
If it happened that, between his toilet and the 
party, he whizzed off with Laddie, what unpleas- 
antness on his return I 

**SIgurd was especially invited for to-night and 
I promised Wallace to bring him. But he's too 
dirty now and he hasn't had his dinner.'' 

**A11 his own doing. He shall come dirty and 
dinnerless and learn to be ashamed of himself." 

Not that he felt ashamed at all, but very tired 
and lame, hobbling behind his family Into a bright, 
chattering room, where everybody wanted to pet 



104 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

him and where all he wanted was to be let alone to 
sleep his frolic off. Why must he be waked up 
with foolish laughter because that glittering tree, 
which he had not been allowed to investigate for 
squirrels, had given, in his name, a toy ship to 
Wallace, whose father. Professor Wit, must needs 
observe: "How like dear Sigurd, to present his 
neighbors with his harqueP^ And though for him 
the Christmas tree bore a chocolate caramel in 
the inmost box of a nest of boxes, he would, tO' 
the disappointment of the company who had heard 
of his skill in opening parcels, yawn and fall asleep 
over each box in turn. At his best, he bit drowsily 
into the pasteboard and pushed at the string more 
clumsily than usual with a pair of grimy paws from 
which the circle of silken skirts would draw away. 
Christmas, indeed, and an inaccessible chocolate 
caramel for dinner! 

Sigurd's most thrilling adventures, naturally, 
had to do with dogs, but cats were an interesting 
side Issue. The self -protective qualities of the 
feline race I realized on our first Sunday walk 
with the puppy, when a gray kitten bobbed up in 
our path. Sigurd romped forward, Joy-of-Life 
caught him by the collar, and I, for my sins, picked 



ADVENTURES 105 

up the kitten. It looked so tiny, helpless and soft; 
it felt like a frame of steel and wire, every little 
muscle tense, while its claws flashed out like dag- 
gers and ripped up the back of my hand. In due 
time Sigurd learned how formidable a cat may 
be. If she ran, he pelted after until she took 
refuge up a tree, but if she proved to be some 
shrewd old grimalkin who held her ground he 
suddenly slackened his pace and sauntered casu- 
ally by, trying to look as if he did not see her. 

His one constant dog friend was Laddie. 
Their escapades were the top of all adventure, — - 
such orgies of wild joy that I would gladly lie 
awake again listening for the hoarse bark of our 
returning prodigal. But with other dogs of his 
own sex, acquaintance, however affably begun, 
would soon ripen into a fight, unless the new com- 
rade were too small and weak or had reasons of 
his own for declining the test of battle. With 
Gyp, across the way, a sly little black and tan, 
well-named, for his ancestors must have run with 
the Romany folk and bequeathed to him a genius 
for thievery, Sigurd did not take the trouble to 
quarrel. Gyp, always skulking about our prem- 
isses, would make off with any of our lighter pos- 



io6 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

sessions carelessly left on porch or lawn. We 
had suffered these losses without redress — for to 
the dog's master, only too ready to beat poor Gyp 
cruelly on the least provocation, we would not 
make complaint — ^till Sigurd came. He had been 
with us barely a week when, one afternoon, as we 
were reading under the trees, Joy-of-Life reached 
a hand behind her for her parasol. It was not 
there. As we both exclaimed, questioned and 
looked about under the shrubbery where the wind, 
had there been a wind, could not possibly have 
blown it, our new guardian stood watching our 

"unsuccessful pains 
With fixed considerate face, 
And puzzling set his puppy brains 
To comprehend the case." 

Suddenly he caught sight of Gyp trying with 
guilty haste to get a long object, balanced in his 
jaws, through a favorite hole in his backyard 
fence. It was never done, for Sigurd was upon 
him in a twinkling, had shaken him thoroughly 
and brought back the parasol essentially un- 
harmed. Several times again he recovered our 
goods and chattels, invariably giving the culprit a 
vigorous shaking, but otherwise keeping on neigh- 



ADVENTURES 107 

borly terms with the little scamp, till life ended 
for Gyp in a kick from his drunken master's boot. 
With another neighbor, black Rod, a noble St. 
Bernard, the initial friendship was soon broken. 
The two dogs were of about the same age and 
had many a frisk together that first summer, but 
when Rod tried to join us on our walks, Joy-of- 
Life, who thought one big puppy enough for am- 
ateurs to handle, would sternly bid Rod, *'Go 
home." Sigurd would promptly spring to enforce 
the command, and Rod would slowly and sulkily 
retreat. After a few of these experiences. Rod 
ceased to follow us, but he never forgave any 
one of the three. Thenceforth for the rest of 
their lives the two dogs, who knew themselves 
almost equally matched in size and strength, 
passed each other, often a dozen times a day, with 
bristling backs and low, cautious growls, while 
never could my friendliest greetings, even when I 
was alone, win the least wiggle of a wag from 
Rod's rigid, remembering tail. He was so fortu- 
nate as to live in a household of children, for 
whom he made the most faithful of protectors, 
and often, on a sparkling winter day, I have met 
him coasting with them, racing down the hill 



io8 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

abreast of the sled, tail waving, eyes gleaming, but 
the instant he became aware of my obnoxious pres- 
ence and observation, the tail would stiffen and 
the eyes would cloud. His hostility was a gen- 
uine hurt to me, so much did I like and respect the 
dog, but even In his old age, when pain and weak- 
ness lay heavy on him, and the children — did he 
understand? — were teasing their mother to have 
him chloroformed so that they might have in his 
place a stylish young Boston bull, he would ac- 
cept from me no comfort of touch or tone. An- 
other unhappy result of these early rebuffs was 
that Sigurd got it firmly fixed in his yellow noddle 
that the words Go home were the profanest of 
curses, and whenever he was so addressed, espe- 
cially by one of us, his aspect of grief and horror 
was ludicrous to behold. Besides, he did not go. 
Through Sigurd our circle of fellowship was 
widened for all time. Here we had been living 
on, half stifled in biped society, well-nigh unaware 
of the jubilant dog world bounding about our feet, 
but In a few months our own collie had made us 
acquainted with a democratic variety of canine 
types. And still I would almost rather meet a 
new dog than a new poet. A certain Norwegian 



ADVENTURES 109 

lake Is twice as dear to memory for the courteous 
Great Dane that did the honors of the bank and 
shared our tea cakes there; the only duchess to 
whose boudoir, at the heart of a frowning Border 
castle, we were ever Invited, Impressed us less 
than the three pompous poodles, their snowy curls 
so absurdly like her own, that squatted on the 
edges of her flowing heliotrope morning-gown and 
were simultaneously upset whenever one of her 
Ladyship's energetic Impulses brought her to her 
feet. 

Sigurd's acquaintances were legion. To only a 
few may space be given here. There was Teddy, 
a black spaniel who aspired to the high standard 
of manners held by his master, a retired army 
officer, and, following example, would punctili- 
ously rise as ladles entered or left the room. 
There were twin dachshunds, who dally drove 
abroad In a limousine and enraged Sigurd by look- 
ing down on him, short-legged that they were, 
from the window opened hardly wide enough to 
let them thrust their black noses through the 
crack. There was the lean, forlorn old hound 
whom all the dog-clubs blackballed and who, In 
consequence, had to satiate his yearning for fel- 



no SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

lowship by keeping company with the minister's 
cow. Every summer morning a silver-headed 
saint whose pulpit labors were done escorted his 
Mulley down our hill and tethered her In the 
broad green pasture below. At a respectful dis- 
tance would follow the homeless hound, who had 
picked up during the night what sustenance he 
could from the neighborhood garbage pails. And 
hard of heart we deemed that neatest of our 
housewives who, to keep his meddling muzzle 
away, used to scatter a profusion of red pepper 
over her garbage. All day long the hound would 
stay in the meadow close to the cow, who, uneasy 
at first under his attentions, came to accept them 
with bovine placidity. Indeed, there was, we 
thought, a certain coquetry in her carriage as, a 
person of importance, she came sedately stepping 
up the hill at sunset, the old clergyman on one 
side and the old dog on the other. Her friend- 
ship with the happy hound grew to be as famous 
In our local annals as, In the realm of books, is 
that of the horse and hen related by White (in his 
Natural History of Selbourne) , or that of the 
swan and trout so poignantly told by Hudson (In 
his Adventures Among Birds). 



ADVENTURES iii 

Certain dogs Sigurd would bully shamelessly, 
like amiable old Bounce, on whom he would hurl 
himself in Bounce's own yard and sit on top of 
him, growling most offensively, until we pulled 
him off. To the subsequent scolding Sigurd would 
listen as long as it interested him and then press 
up against us and offer his paw, as if to say, "All 
right; enough of that; let's be friends again." 

On the other hand, he had such a liking for our 
Professor Far-Away that he stretched his regard 
to cover her successive dogs, Chum and Jack, 
though he was born too late to know her beauti- 
ful black collie, Wallace. He would even allow 
Chum, an adopted stray, a nondescript animal of 
preposterous awkwardness, to drink from his own 
Japanese bowl, spattering the water, in Chum's 
uncouth fashion, half across the hall, while Jack, 
an Irish terrier, 

* With the soul in the shining eyes of him," 
ranked in Sigurd's esteem next after Laddie. 
Professor Far-Away, whose perilous joy it was to 
traverse, with Jack, unexplored tracts of China 
and Thibet, attended by a train of coolies, would, 
when dull destiny called her back to the class 
room, effect brief escapes by way of bicycle runs 



112 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

through the wood roads, attended by a train of 
dogs. When her cavalcade swept by our hill, 
Sigurd would leap up as if at the call of the Wild 
Huntsman and rush forth to fall in. Through 
her long absences in foreign lands he never ceased 
to listen for her gypsy whistle, and once, at least, 
he was literally her first caller on her return. He 
came tearing back to his own family, in high ex- 
citement, with a traveler's tag waving from his 
collar. The tag was penciled over with the Wan- 
derer's greeting, adding *'how dear it was of 
Sigurd" to be barking at her door within ten min- 
utes after she and Jack had crossed their 
threshold. When Professor Far-Away writes 
The Junketings of Jack, there will be a book worth 
reading. 

Although our puppy had several times returned 
with a scratched face, after encounters with vet- 
eran cats, his first fight was with Major, a rugged 
brindle bull, who lorded It over all the dogs in 
town. We had been warned of Major and when, 
one September morning, I went to the door In 
answer to the now familiar woof, I knew, even 
without the uplift of Sigurd's eloquent look, what 
had happened. He was dripping with blood, his 



ADVENTURES 113 

own and Major's, and dragged one hind leg 
painfully, yet he had an air of expecting congrat- 
ulations. We bathed and disinfected his wounds 
as well as our inexperience could — in the course 
of the next few years we became experts at canine 
first aid — ^but the Injury to the leg looked so seri- 
ous that we called in Dr. Vet, who found that one 
of Major's tusks had penetrated the joint. The 
leg was packed In an antiphlogistic clay until it 
looked more like an elephant's leg than Sigurd's 
and was secured from the investigation of his own 
inquisitive teeth by broad bands of plaster and 
innumerable yards of bandages. The proud suf- 
ferer, who, claiming that he was now entitled to 
all sick privileges, had Insisted on taking to my 
bed, lay there on a fresh rug, anxiously watching 
every movement of the doctor's hands but endur- 
ing even the probing without protest. 

After ^sculaplus had gone and the rest of the 
family were gathered about the invalid, who, de- 
spite all smarts and aches, keenly relished being 
the center of attention, Joy-of-LIfe and I sallied 
forth to inquire for Major. That redoubtable 
little ruffian, cuddled Into his basket, rolled up 
doleful eyes from a gory lump that bore but small 



114 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

resemblance to his massive, wrinkled, pugnacious 
head. A beholder of the battle reported that as 
Sigurd was trotting innocently across a vacant lot, 
a brighter spot of yellow weaving its path through 
the goldenrod, Major, after his wonted manner 
of attack, came sneaking up behind and gripped 
him by the joint of a hind leg. Sigurd wheeled, 
catching and crushing Major's head between his 
own powerful jaws, and then the two dogs, locked 
in furious combat, spun round and round, a snarl- 
ing whirligig, gathering a vociferous group of in- 
effective dissuaders, until a grocer's boy, jumping 
down from his delivery wagon, came rushing up 
with a packet of pepper, hurling its contents into 
Sigurd's nostrils and, through his literally open 
countenance, into Major's. In a spasm of sneez- 
ing, the circle of dog broke apart, and each dilapi- 
dated fragment made for home. Sigurd was a 
week or more in getting well and he limped for a 
month after, but the scars on Major's head were 
in evidence longer yet. They never matched 
prowess again, though the language that they 
would use to each other, especially with a wide 
road between them, is not fit for print. 

Every evening of that first week our hero was 



ADVENTURES 115 

carried or helped downstairs and put to bed on 
the piazza, but every morning he crawled and 
scrambled up again, crying out like a child as his 
injured leg, trailing behind him, suffered jar or 
bump. Nobody could resist his pleading to be 
lifted back to the bed and allowed to play hospital 
a little longer, and Cecilia, more than ever his de- 
voted slave, delighted in bringing him, to his enor- 
mous pride, his dinner on a tray. He always 
barked for the family to come in and behold that 
glorious spectacle, and he barked, too, whenever 
the door bell rang, requesting the caller to come 
up at once and pay respects to the Happy War- 
rior. Apart from these red-letter events, his great 
diversion was trying to rid his muffled leg of the 
bandages and plaster, — an exercise in which he 
soon became only too proficient. 

In Sigurd's last fight — with a gallant old mas- 
tiff, Rex — one of his forelegs, bitten in three 
places, was put out of action for two months, but 
no fuss was made about it. We had grown hard- 
ened to Sigurd's battle-wounds. Sulpho-naphthol 
and his own tongue worked the cure, though it 
took no little ingenuity to extract from between 
Sigurd's teeth the stray tufts of grizzled hair that 



ii6 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

he wanted to keep as souvenirs of Rex, who, still 
feebly growling, had to be fetched off the field in 
a wheelbarrow. 

From first to last, Sigurd's adventures were too 
often misadventures. As a youngster, he was 
continually getting into trouble. It seemed un- 
fortunate that he should have so many feet, for 
what with thorns, tacks, broken glass, jagged ice 
and the like, one or another of them was usually 
in piteous condition. 

His name brought more than one fight upon 
him, as our call of Sigurd! Sigurd! when he 
started out to investigate a dog-stranger, was 
often mistaken for Sick * em! Sick *em! and the 
dog's owner would reciprocate in kind. Once an 
indignant father, a summer visitor in the town, 
passionately charged us with setting our dog on 
his two "motherless boys," whereas we had been 
doing our best to call Sigurd off from a chase 
after those provoking little rascals, who had at- 
tacked him with a shower of pebbles. 

Restless with his waxing strength he took to 
roving in the woods, where once he was caught 
in a trap and painfully dragged himself home with 
a lacerated leg that he had torn free from the 



ADVENTURES 117 

cruel grip of the steel. In the West Woods he 
once had a narrow escape. He was seen by a 
wandering botanist to plunge into a swampy hole 
for water, a beverage that, In spite of our hy- 
gienic warnings, Sigurd seemed to prefer with a 
flavor of dirt. The mire there has a quicksand 
quality, and Sigurd sank, splashing In frantic 
struggle, until only his nose was barely visible 
above the black ooze, but In that extremity he 
seemed to get a momentary hold for his hind feet, 
perhaps on root or snag, and by a desperate effort 
lurched himself up and out. He lay on the bank, 
panting and trembling, a sorely spent collie, for 
thirty-five minutes by the botanist's watch, before 
he revived sufficiently to roll over and over In 
the ferns and rub off some of the mud. Even so, 
when he reached home he was so smeared and 
malodorous with mire that, all unwitting of the 
mortal peril from which he had emerged, we met 
him with a scolding, scoured him off with news- 
papers and shut him out of doors for the rest of 
the day. 

We grew to dislike the progress of civilization, 
so much did trains, trolleys, golf-balls and motors 
add to our anxiety, but his own supreme aversion 



ii8 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

was, In his early years, the biqrcle. On a certain 
summer day, when a deeper trouble than Sigurd 
could understand brooded over the house, he 
trotted down to the forbidden center of the town, 
The Square, In quest of entertainment. As he 
was crossing, there came upon him from one side 
a carriage and from the other a bicycle, whose 
rider, a Canadian, turned In his flurry the wrong 
way. Out of the resultant crash Sigurd sprang 
to the sidewalk, but the bicycle reeled after him 
and. In falling, struck him so sharply as to leave 
a long black bruise under one eye. An observer 
of the collision told us that Sigurd "flashed off 
toward home like a streak of sulphur.** As soon 
as the door was opened In response to his frantic 
barking, he bolted upstairs and took refuge under 
my bed. The household in Its grieved pre-occupa- 
tlon forgot all about him, and It was not until 
evening that he stole down Into the family circle. 
With a careless glance at the black mark, we re- 
buked him for having a smutty face. The wistful 
look of the misunderstood came Into those amber 
eyes, but he comforted himself with a belated din- 
ner and waited for Time to tell his story. The 
bruise lasted long and the fright still longer. 



ADVENTURES 119 

More than a year later Joy-of-Life and I were 
driving through the tranquillities of an Indian 
summer afternoon, with Sigurd, by this time a 
strong and rapid runner, far ahead. Suddenly we 
saw him tearing back In terror. Without waiting 
for us to pull up, he bounded over the wheel into 
the phaeton and pressed his shaking body close 
against our knees. As we drove on, we looked to 
right and left for the hippogrif that had so ap- 
palled him, and presently beheld It, — a riderless 
bicycle leaning against a garden wall. 



THE HEART OF A DOG 

Where did they learn 

The miracle of love, 

These dogs that turn 

From food and sleep at our light-whistled cal^ 

Eager to fling 

Their all 

Of speed and grace into glad following? 

Not the wolf pack 

Taught savage instinct love, 

For there to lack 

The power to slay was to be hunger-slain; 

Once down, a prey, 

A stain 

Of crimson on the snow, a tuft of gray. 

Was It from us 

They learned such loyal love 

Magnanimous, 

Meeting our injuries with trustful eyes? 

Are we so true. 

So wise. 

So broken-hearted when love's day is through? 

Where did they learn 

The miracle of love? 

Though beauty burn 

In rainbow, foam and flame, these have not heard, 

Nor trees and flowers. 

That word. 

Only our dogs would give their lives for ours. 



HOME STUDIES 

*'Thou know'st whate'er I see, read, learn, 
Related to thy species, friend, 
I tell thee, hoping it may turn 
To thine advantage — so attend." 
— Caroline Bowles Southey's Conte a Mon Chien, 

In pursuance of this curriculum, while Joy-of- 
Life sat on the floor beside Sigurd for a good- 
night brush of his gleaming coat, I would read to 
them from any canine classic that chanced to be 
at hand, — Rab and His Friends, Bobby of Grey- 
friars, My Dogs of the Northland, The Call of 
the Wild, Bob, Son of Battle, John Muir's vivid 
story of his Stickeen, Maeterlinck's brooding 
biography of his Pelleas with the bulging fore- 
head of Socrates, or De Amicis' touching account 
of his blessed mongrel, Dick. When Sigurd grew 
restless under his toilet and wanted to jump up 
and play, we would tell him how the great dog 
Kitmer, the only animal besides Balaam's ass and 
the camel that carried Mahomet on his flight from 
Mecca to be admitted into the Moslem paradise, 

121 



122 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

had "stretched forth his forelegs" for three hun- 
dred years In the mouth of a cave, mounting guard 
over the Seven Sleepers. 

Joy-of-Life, who was an historian as well as 
an economist and had written, despite the annoy- 
ance of being confined to the same set of dates and 
dynasties, three histories of England, would reach 
down from her book shelves some high authority 
and read us, perhaps, Plutarch's report of the 
watchdog, Cipparus, who guarded the temple of 
^sculapius at Athens so well that when a thief 
slipped off with some of the precious offerings, he 
went after in unrelenting pursuit. *'First, the man 
pelted him with stones, but Cipparus would not 
give up. When day came, he kept at a little dis- 
tance, but followed with his eye on the man and, 
when the fellow threw him food, would not touch 
it. When the man lay down, he spent the night by 
him; when he walked again, the dog got up and 
kept following. Cipparus fawned on any way- 
farers he met, but kept barking at the thief. 
When the authorities, who were in chase, heard 
of this from people who had met the pair and who 
described the color and size of the dog, they pur- 
sued with yet more zeal, seized the man and 



HOME STUDIES 123 

brought him back from Crommyon. The dog 
turned round and led the way, proud and de- 
lighted, evidently claiming that he had caught the 
temple thief.'* 

Another evening it would be Motley's account 
of the escape of the Prince of Orange from a 
night raid sent out by the Duke of Alva, when the 
Prince was encamped near Mons. *'The sentinels 
were cut down, the whole armv surprised, and for 
a moment powerless, while, for two hours long, 
from one o'clock in the morning until three, the 
Spaniards butchered their foes, hardly aroused 
from their sleep, ignorant by how small a force 
they had been thus suddenly surprised, and un- 
able in the confusion to distinguish between friend 
and foe. The boldest, led by Julian in person, 
made at once for the Prince's tent. His guards 
and himself were in profound sleep, but a small 
spaniel, who always passed the night upon his 
bed, was a more faithful sentinel. The creature 
sprang forward, barking furiously at the sound of 
hostile footsteps, and scratching his master's face 
with his paws. There was but just time for the 
Prince to mount a horse which was ready saddled, 
and to effect his escape through the darkness, be- 



124 SIGURD OUR G^OLDEN COLLIE 

fore his enemies sprang into the tent. His serv- 
ants were cut down, his master of the horse and 
two of his secretaries, who gained their saddles 
a moment later, all lost their lives, and but for 
the little dog's watchfulness, William of Orange, 
upon whose shoulders the whole weight of his 
country's fortunes depended, would have been led 
within a week to an ignominious death. To his' 
dying day, the Prince ever afterwards kept a 
spaniel of the same race in his bed-chamber." 

And well he might, and well, too, did the 
sculptors place a little dog of marble or bronze 
at the feet of his royal statues hardly more silent 
than himself, but what Sigurd and I clamored to 
know was whether, on that wild night of Septem- 
ber eleventh, 1572, the spaniel escaped with his 
master or died with the servants and secretaries 
on Spanish steel, and no historian, not even our 
own, could tell us. With the ancient guile of 
teachers she would divert our attention from the 
question she could not answer by relating some- 
thing else, — how Denmark commemorates a dog 
true to a deposed king in a high order of nobility 
whose motto runs, Wild-hrat was faithful. Or 
she would take down the first volume of her well- 



HOME STUDIES 125 

^orn Heimskringla and excite Sigurd's young 
ambition by the record of King Saur. For when 
Eyestein, Kjng of the Uplands, had harried 
Thrandheim and set his son over them, and they 
had slain the son, then *'King Eyestein fared 
a-warring the second time into Thrandheim, and 
harried wide there, and laid folk under him. 
Then he bade the Thrandheimers choose whether 
they would have for king his thrall, who was 
called Thorir Faxi, or his hound, who was called 
Saur; and they chose the second, deeming they 
would then the rather do their own will. Then 
let they bewitch into the hound the wisdom of 
three men, and he barked two words and spake 
the third. A collar was wrought for him, and 
chains of gold and silver; and whenso the ways 
were miry, his courtmen bare him on their shoul-* 
ders. A high-seat was dight for him, and he sat 
on howe as kings do; he dwelt at the Inner Isle, 
and had his abode at the stead called Saur's Howe. 
And so say folk that he came to his death In this 
wise, that the wolves fell on his flocks and herds, 
and his courtmen egged him on to defend his 
sheep; so he leaped down from his howe, and 



126 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

went to meet the wolves, but they straightway tore 
him asunder.'' 

On the whole, Sigurd preferred poetry, whose 
rhythm promptly put him to sleep. It was all one 
to him whether Homer sang the joy-broken heart 
of old Argus, over whom 

"the black night of death 
Came suddenly, as soon as he had seen 
Ulysses, absent now for twenty years," 

or Virgil chanted the device whereby ^neas and 
the Sibyl baffled the giant watch-dog of Hades. 

"The three-mouthed bark of Cerberus here filleth all the place, 
As huge he lieth in a den that hath them full in face ; 
But when the adders she beheld upon his crest up-borne, 
A sleepy morsel honey-steeped and blent of wizard's corn, 
She cast him: then his three-fold throat, all wild with hun- 
ger's lack, 
He opened wide, and caught at it, and sank his monstrous 

back, 
And there he lay upon the earth enormous through the cave." 

Sigurd would softly thump his tail in cadence 
with the melancholy beat of a dog elegy, whether 
Prior's tribute to the virtues of Queen Mary's 
True, or Gay's ironic consolation to Celia on the 
death of her lap-dog Shock, Cowper's impartial 
epitaphs for My Lord's pointer Neptune and My 



HOME STUDIES 127 

Lady's spaniel Fop, Lehmann's memorial of his 
retriever, who 

"Chose, since official dogs at times unbend, 
The household cat for confidante and friend," 

Louise Imogen Guiney's lament for 

"All the sweet wavy 
Beauty of Davy," 

or Winifred Letts' apostrophe to the debonair 
collie Scott, or Hilton Brown's tenderest of fare- 
wells to his Scotch terrier, Hamish. 

"In the nether spaces 
Will the soul of a Little Black Dog despair? 
Will the Quiet Folk scare him with shadow-faces? 
And how will he tackle the Strange Beasts there? 
Tail held high, I'll warrant, and bristling, 
Marching stoutly if sore afraid, 
Padding it steadily, softly whistling; — 
That's how the Little Black Devil was made." 

Sigurd lived too early to take part in the Free 
Verse controversy, but he evinced an open mind 
on matters metrical in that he liked Lord Byron's 
inscription for his Newfoundland Boatswain no 
better than Lord Eldon's for his Newfoundland 
Csesar. It was Sir WlHIam Watson's famous 
quatrain, An Epitaph, that affected him most 
keenly, because it invited emphasis on the one 



128 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

word that always brought him springing to his 
feet. 

"His friends he loved. His fellest earthly foes 
— Cats — I believe he did but feign to hate. 
My hand will miss the insinuated nose, 
Mine eyes the tail that wagged contempt at Fate." 

As Sigurd was duly shown Canis Major in the 
ethereal heavens, so was he introduced to certain 
starry dogs that shine in the skies of English 
poetry, — the pampered "smale houndes'* of 
Chaucer's Prioress, King Lear's elegant little 
"Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart,'* dear, clownish 
Crab, and all that pack of rich-voiced hunting 
hounds whose ''gallant chiding" rings through 
Elizabethan literature. The boy Will Shake- 
speare must often have hearkened to the hounds, 
*'match'd in mouth like bells," coursing the Cots- 
wolds, Silver and Belman and Sweetlips and Echo, 
their heads hung *'with ears that sweep away the 
morning dew," the ''speed of the cry" outrun- 
ning his "sense of hearing." 

Sigurd was but mildly interested when we told 
him that in George Eliot's novels there were over 
fifty dogs, ranging all the way from pug to mas- 



HOME STUDIES 129 

tiff, nor did he care greatly for Dickens' dogs, not 
even blundering, ill-favored, clumsy, **bullet- 
headed" Diogenes, Florence Dombey's comforter, 
nor the bandy leader of Jerry's dancing troupe, 
who, because of a lost half-penny, had to grind 
out Old Hundred on the barrel-organ while his 
companions devoured their supper— and his; but 
Scott's dogs, from fleet Lufra of The Lady of 
the Lake to the Dandy Dinmonts of Guy Man* 
tiering, — ^"There's auld Pepper and auld Mustard, 
and young Pepper and young Mustard, and little 
Pepper and little Mustard" — ^made him blink and 
prick up his ears. Thus encouraged, I would tell 
him of Sir Walter's love for all his home dogs 
and most of all for the tall stag-hound Maida; 
how Herri ck wept for his spaniel Tracy; how 
Southey grieved when his "poor old friend" 
Phillis, another spaniel, was drowned; how Lan- 
dor delighted in dogs from the boyhood when he 
boxed with Caotain behind the coach house door 
to the extreme old age whose loneliness was so- 
laced by two silky-coated Pomeranians, first, in 
Bath, by the golden Pomero, who would bark an 
ecstatic accompaniment to his master's tremendous 
explosions of laughter, and then, in Florence, by 



130 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

Giallo, whose opinions on politics and letters the 
snowy-bearded poet would quote with humorous 
respect; how Nero, a Maltese fringy-paws, bright- 
ened the somber home of the Carlyles; and how 
Pope's favorite dog was, as he bitterly suggests, 
not unlike himself in being ''a little one, a lean 
one, and none of the finest shaped." If Sigurd 
seemed responsive, I might go on with accounts 
of Mrs. Browning's Flush; of Hogg's Hector, 
"auld, towzy, trusty friend"; of Arnold's dachs« 
hunds, Geist, Max and Kaiser; of Gilder's Leo, 
*'Leo the shaggy, the lustrous, the giant, the 

gentle Newfoundland," 
of Lehman's "flop-eared" Rufus, and of Miss 
Letts' terrier Tim in his "wheaten-colored coat." 
Lest Sigurd should get the impression that the 
globe was populated chiefly by poets, Joy-of-Life 
would strike in with anecdotes of the little dogs 
that frisked about Frederick the Great, and 
Charles II, the Merry Monarch, and tell how 
Edward VII's last pet, Caesar, a fox terrier, 
trotted mournfully in the funeral procession be- 
hind Kildare, the royal charger; or she would 
"unmuzzle her wisdom" to the point of declaring 
that the kings of Babylon and Nineveh had their 



HOME STUDIES 131 

favorite hunting hounds with tails curled up over 
the back and collars wrought in the form of leafy 
wreaths. She would inform Sigurd, who took it 
flippantly, that solemn burial honors had been 
paid to dogs in ancient times, that the Egyptians 
held them sacred and religiously embalmed their 
bodies, and that many a Celtic chief and Norland 
viking lies more quiet beneath his cairn because 
his noblest deerhound slumbers at his feet. Or 
perhaps she would relate, for our collie's ethical 
guidance, celebrated deeds of hero dogs. Sigurd 
would grunt and grumble in sympathy with her 
deep tones as she chanted the famous ballad of 
Beth Gelert, that "peerless hound" whose fidelity 
cost him his life, or of the twice-sung terrier, 
haunter of Helvellyn, who for three months kept 
watch beside her master's body at the foot of the 
fatal precipice. Sigurd did not care for Words- 
worth as much as Wordsworth would have cared 
for him, but he loved Little Music, striving in 
vain to save her fellow Dart under whose speed 
the river-ice had broken. 

On one of those fortunate evenings when we 
had the Dryad with us, Sigurd would listen with 
waxing incredulity to legends of King Arthur's 



132 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

hound Cavall, whose paw left Its print on British 
rock; of Merlin's demon dog, black with red ears, 
akin to the little black dog that danced about 
Faustus, sending out flying flames from its feet; 
of Fingal's Bran and his last chase after the en- 
chanted snow-white hart; and of Tristram's faith- 
ful Hodain, who licked the dregs from the cup 
of love which the knight and Queen Iseult had 
quaffed together. Sigurd was frankly skeptical 
about those 

"Half a hundred good ban-dogs" 

of Fountains Abbey, who, whistled to his help by 
the fighting friar, gave Robin Hood and his 
archers not a little trouble. 

"Two dogs at once to Robin Hood did go, 

T'one behind, the other before; 
Robin Hood's mantle of Lincoln green 
Off from his back they tore. 

"And whether his men shot east or west, 

Or they shot north or south, 
The curtal dogs, so taught they were, 
They caught the arrows in their mouth." 

But Petit-Crin, the fairy dog from Avalon that 
Tristram gave to Iseult, was more than any honest 
collie could endure. 



HOME STUDIES 133 

"No tongue could tell the marvel of It; 'twas 
of such wondrous fashion that no man might say 
of what color it was. If one looked on the breast, 
and saw naught else, one had said 'twas white as 
snow, yet its thighs were greener than clover, and 
its sides, one red as scarlet, the other more yel- 
low than saffron. Its under parts were even as 
azure, while above 'twas mingled, so that no one 
color might be distinguished; 'twas neither green 
nor red, white nor black, yellow nor blue, and yet 
there was somewhat of all these therein; 'twas a 
fair purple brown. And if one saw this strange 
creation of Avalon against the lie of the hair 
there would be no man wise enough to tell its 
color, so manifold and changing were its hues. 

"Around its neck was a golden chain, and 
therefrom hung a bell, which rang so sweet and 
clear when it began to chime Tristram forgot his 
sadness and his sorrow, and the longing for 
Iseult that lay heavy at his heart. So sweet was 
the tone of the bell that no man heard it but he 
straightway forgat all that aforetime had troubled 
him. 

"Tristram hearkened, and gazed on this won- 
drous marvel; he took note of the dog and the 



134 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

bell, the changing colors of the hair, and the sweet 
sound of the chimes; and it seemed to him that 
the marvel of the dog was greater than that of 
the music which rang in his ears, and banished all 
thought of sorrow. 

"He stretched forth his hand and stroked the 
dog, and it seemed to him that he handled the 
softest silk, so fine and so smooth was the hair 
to his touch. And the dog neither growled, nor 
barked, nor showed any sign of ill temper, how- 
ever one might play with it; nor, as the tale goes, 
was it ever seen to eat or to drink." 

At this point, Sigurd rose, shook himself and 
stalked out to the kitchen. He could bear a great 
deal from his pedantic mistresses, but there were 
limits. Satiated with history and literature, he 
proposed to relax his mind by a turn at psy- 
chology. 

From Cecilia's successor, Ellen, Sigurd was 
taking a brief but vivid course in psychics. To be 
sure, a bona fide professor in that field dwelt near 
us, her high-picketed fence enclosing a baker's 
dozen of spaniels. It was understood, to the awe 
of the community, that by their aid she investi- 
gated certain dark corners of her shadowy sub- 



HOME STUDIES 135 

ject; but Sigurd, embarrassed by the attentions 
thrust upon him by the grandmother of the spaniel 
family, rested content with his unacademic tutor. 

"Poor Ellen," as she invariably called herself, 
was a small, wiry, nut-brown Irish woman, whose 
gray hair rose erect, as if just affrighted by pouke 
or pixy, from above a constantly wrinkling fore- 
head and a pair of snapping jet eyes. She must 
have been on the borders of insanity, if not across, 
when she came to us. She was a furious worker, 
cycloning about the house with mop and broom 
at all hours and not hesitating to upbraid the col- 
lege president herself, most benign and punctili- 
ous of ladies, if her boots brought one speck of 
mud into *Toor Ellen's clane hall." Her chief 
pride, however, was in her frugality, as we dis- 
covered to our dismay on her second afternoon, 
when, as it often happily chanced, the Dryad, 
then living on the campus, dropped in for a call 
and consented to remain for dinner. 

It was a simple matter, in our informal way of 
life, to call back from the piazza through the hall 
to the figure setting the table in the dining room; 

**Lay another plate, please, Ellen. Our friend 
stays to dine with us." 



136 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

But the wail that succeeded nearly slew our 
friend by throwing her into an agony of sup- 
pressed laughter. 

"Mother of God! Isn^t that the burning 
shame! And me maning the three chops should 
do us all!'' 

Ellen had been with us but a few days, though 
the house was already so scoured and polished 
that we scarcely dared set foot on our own floors, 
when a prolonged season of sultry weather broke 
in a tremendous thunderstorm. These thunder- 
storms were always a challenge to Sigurd's valor. 
At the first crash he would pluckily make for the 
porch, where, flinging up his head, he would cast 
back one defiant bark to that Superdog in the 
skies; then, scared by his own audacity, he would 
usually bolt upstairs and take refuge under a bed. 
But this time he fled, with the second shattering 
peal, to Ellen, who was rocking herself, a crouch- 
ing, huddled figure, to and fro on the cellar stairs, 
screaming in a weird, blood-curdling chant : 

"Mercy of God! Poor Ellen belaves in God 
the Father and in the Holy Mother of God and 
in all the blissid saints of heaven. Oh, grace of 
Mary! Poor Ellen belaves in thim all. Good 



HOME STUDIES 137 

Lord, you never kilt Poor Ellen yet and you 
i;70uldn't be after doing it now whin her bones be 
old and her heart a nest of sorrows. The Lord 
look down in pity on the poor." 

With Sigurd hugged tight, Ellen's shrieks grad- 
ually sank into sob and moan, and from that hour 
he was her one confidante and comrade. Not 
even in him would she allow the least untidiness^ 
but would fly to meet him at the threshold, pick- 
ing up each paw in turn and manicuring it in her 
apron, and would insist, despite our remon- 
strances, in squatting down outside the back door 
and feeding his dinner to him, bit by bit, lest 
"Gobble-mouth" drop crumbs and gravy on *Toor 
Ellen's clane gravel." 

Sigurd found this fellowship at his meals so 
entrancing that he would eat even baked beans 
from Ellen's lean brown fingers and would take 
advantage of her society to get twice as much 
dinner as was good for him. When his dish was 
empty and polished bright, under Ellen's approv- 
ing eye, by his circling tongue, he would prom- 
enade dolefully about the kitchen, peering with 
an air of deep dejection Into coal hod and wood, 
basket, as if he were starved to a diet of cinders 



138 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

and kindlings, well aware that behind his back 
Ellen was heaping his dish anew. Her excess of 
thrift, from which our own table suffered, was 
never brought to bear on Sigurd. 

As he ate, she would tell him long stories of 
her childhood in hungry Ireland and of her hard, 
bewildered, wandering life in the Land of Prom- 
ise. Only once was I guilty of pausing by the 
kitchen door to listen. 

"It was the place afore this, Darlint, or maybe 
the place afore that, or maybe another, that Old 
Goldtooth wedded my widow woman and took 
her to New York for the shows. He'd been 
drinking more than a drop the day and he says, 
*Let's bring Poor Ellen along, for the fun of it. 
You can lend her your second-best bonnet, for 
there's money to buy more in New York.' But 
it wasn't her second-best, nor yet her third, the 
comical thing she set on me. To a hotel in New 
York he took us and a gra^jd feed he gave us. 
Thin off to the show they wint, and he put a news- 
paper in my hand, and opened up at a page with 
niver a picture on it, and he told me to sit there 
like a lady and read about Boarding Houses. So 
there was Poor Ellen all that avening, and long 



HOME STUDIES 139 

It was as a rosary of nights, holding up that paper, 
with the quare letters, all sizes, dancing over it, 
and reading about Boarding Houses. But whin 
they came back — O Darlint, the saints defind us I 
— he told me it was about the Borden Murder 
I'd been reading, not Boarding Houses at all, and 
Poor Ellen not sensing a scratch of it, or sure 
she'd been scared into a fit. Don't let thim tache 
you to read their books, Darlint, for sure there's 
no knowing what the black words might be say- 
ing." 

But although this is the only outpouring of 
Ellen's confidence to Sigurd at which I played 
eavesdropper, too often her mad screeches would 
bring us pell-mell into the kitchen where we would 
find the two of them wrought to a state of high- 
est excitement. Once Sigurd, lying at full length, 
was squeezing a hollow rubber ball between his 
lips, making it emit harrowing squeaks that Ellen, 
hopping grotesquely up and down, identified as 
the cries of an imprisoned banshee. Another 
time she had one arm clasped about Sigurd's neck 
and with the other hand was pounding her little 
alarm clock on the floor, entreating him, *'Bite 
the feaver whin it jumps out, Darlint. A year 



140 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

ago by this clock it was that Poor Ellen had the 
feaver and died and she has been in the Fire ever 
since." 

Again we heard sounds of scuffling and strug- 
gle, punctuated by desperate screams from Ellen 
and furious barks from Sigurd. The kitchen was 
in a whirlwind, but Ellen was presently calmed 
enough to explain to us in terrified gasps that the 
demons were trying to drag her away from the 
throne of God and that she had set Sigurd on her 
tormentors. Our gallant collie evidently drove 
off the fiends, for Ellen's passion of resistance 
suddenly ceased and, sinking to the floor, she hid 
her convulsed face in Sigurd's ruff, wailing, "But 
next time they'll get me. Poor Ellen! Poor 
Ellen ! It's a sore and sorry life she's had, and 
to come to the Pain in the end!" 

On the last night of Ellen's stay with us, — for 
we had arranged, without telling her, to have the 
crazy old creature transferred to the office of a 
friendly physician, where her prowess with the 
scrubbing-brush would be appreciated and her 
mental peculiarities be under wise and humane 
observation — an ear-splitting yell once more sum- 
moned us post-haste to the kitchen. Sigurd, erect 



HOME STUDIES 141 

on rigid legs, was staring with an uncanny fixity 
of gaze on vacanq^, while Ellen, on her knees, 
wringing her hands above her head, was alter- 
nately abjuring him and Heaven. 

*'0 Darlint, is it my death yeVe after seeing 
now? Is it Poor Ellen with the candles at head 
and feet? Och, let me go! I lave this house 
to-night. It's not Poor Ellen will bide with a dog 
does be looking at her own ghost." 

"Nonsense, Ellen!" protested Joy-of-Life, in- 
terposing her strong, wholesome presence between 
the distracted old woman and the outside door. 
"There are no ghosts here. Sigurd is only look- 
ing at the wall. Perhaps he heard a rat or a 
mouse in there." 

^^Ouchl'* shrilled Ellen, dodging out of the 
door in a fresh paroxysm of fright. "Rats and 
mice is it! Rats and mice do be the black spirits 
come to gnaw out our brains. And here they've 
come for Poor Ellen's wits. They chase Poor 
Ellen wherever she goes. But she'll give thim 
the slip on the morrow." 

While Joy-of-Life brought Ellen in, quieted 
her with malted milk and sent her to bed, I puz- 
zled over Sigurd, whose staring eyes and bris- 



142 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

tling hair still gave evidence of something we 
could not discern. Other observers of dog con- 
duct have testified to occurrences of this kind, 
as, very recently, the master of a red cocker 
spaniel (Walter E. Carr In The Story of Five 
Dogs) and from far antiquity the Arabs, who 
hold that a dog can see the wings of the Angel 
of Death hovering over the one for whom Azrael 
has been sent. 

Ellen came down In the morning, still deter- 
mined on departure and entirely content with the 
place we had secured for her. All that day 
through she was her most cleanly, thrifty and 
cheerful self. Nothing would do but she must 
sweep the whole house from attic to cellar, espe- 
cially scouring her own room until it was pure 
enough for Diana. Pleased with the bustle of 
packing and getting off, evidently an habitual 
state of things with Poor Ellen, she graced her 
farewell with a flourish of economical courtesies. 
She presented Joy-of-LIfe with a banana which 
she had blarneyed from our Italian fruit-vender, 
and gave me a little jar of cream, begged or bul- 
lied from the milkman in the early dawn. As 
for Sigurd, she made him a square foot of his 



HOME STUDIES 143 

favorite corn bread and hung a Catholic medal 
to his collar. She went off in the best of humor, 
greatly set up by her own cleverness in having 
been able to make, so cheaply, such suitable good- 
by gifts. When the expressman came for her 
shabby, bulging bag, she treated him to such a 
nice little luncheon of cookies and lemonade that 
he offered her a ride to the station. From the 
driver's lofty seat she waved us a queenly adieu, 
calling back: "The Lord loves Poor Ellen, after 
all." Sigurd ran with the wagon as far as the 
corner. The last we saw of his psychic instruc* 
tor, she was kissing her workworn hands to him 
and shrilling back endearments. 



THE PLEADERS 

Before the Majesty of Most High God 

The gentlest of the glad Archangels came; 
Swift down the emerald avenue he trod, 

His eager sandals quivering to flame. 
Close at his heels there frisked a dog, his mate 

In bygone journey ings with young Tobias, 
A dog "without," whose love had dared the gate, 

Scenting the steps of Brother Azarias, 
So-called in those blithe morns when, laughing-eye<^ 

By thorn and myrrh, the dew on every stem, 
He led the son of Tobit to his bride, 

And the lad's dog went leaping after them. 

The little winds that in those sunrise-flushed, 

Fleet plumes had nestled, to the harpstrings flew 
To learn gold melodies for May, but hushed 

Was all that glory till a Voice pealed through: 
"Mine Angel Raphael, of the Holy Seven 

Who lift the prayers of saints before the Throne, 
What wild, unworded anguish troubles Heaven, 

To man's appeal the wailing undertone? 
Men's orisons for Peace, for Peace, for Peace, 

Smothered the psalms of Paradise, until 
I bade that vain and bitter crying cease. 

My will is Peace. Let mortals do my will." 

Before the shining of the Mercy Seat 
The Angel raised a censer. "Lord, I bring 

The screams of shell-torn horses, thrashing feet 
Of mangled mules, the pigeon's broken wing. 



Gasping of dogs gas-tortured, wounds and woe 

Of myriad creatures by Thy breath endowed 
With being. Theirs the prayers that overflow 

This vessel by whose weight my heart is bowed." 
Ah, strange to see that poor, vague incense rise, 

Dim supplication crossed by fragrances 
Of courage, faithfulness, self-sacrifice 

Even of these brute martyrs, even of these. 

"Brother of Sorrows, bear to man those groans 

Of a creation that I fashioned well 
And gave to his dominion, — man, who owns 

One morning star to make it heaven or hell, 
I am but God, a Pity throned above 

To watch the sparrow's fall, to feel its throes 
And wait the slow, sweet blossoming of love, 

Small, kindly loves from which the Great Love grows. 
Then Raphael, Healer of the Earth, bowed thrice, 

Withdrawing through the ranks of seraphim 
Who smiled to see how, scorning Paradise, 

On frolic feet the dog sped after him. 



COLLEGE CAREER 

"Thy faith is all the knowledge that thou hast." 

Jonson's Epigrams, XVIII. 

Whatever may be thought of Sigurd's college 
career, there can be no doubt that he careered 
through college. He was at the top of bliss in a 
mad run over the campus. With streaming ruff 
and tail he would rush on like Lelaps, the wild 
hound of Cephalus on the trail of the monstrous 
fox sent by a slighted goddess to harass the The- 
bans and, like Lelaps when the Olympians chose 
to make the chase eternal by turning both dog 
and fox to stone, Sigurd would come to a sudden 
stop on the brow of a hill, standing out against 
the sky like a collie statue poised for running. 

Joy-of-Life could cross the broad meadow al- 
most as lightly and swiftly as he and their morn- 
ing pilgrimages to chapel were expeditions of high 
glory. There were hundreds of girls abroad at 
that hour and often Sigurd would wheel from 

the path and dash jubilantly toward any figure 

146 



COLLEGE CAREER 147 

that took his fancy, confident of welcome. But 
if the individual chanced to be a new freshman, 
not yet acquainted with the college dignitaries, 
she might meet his advances with fear or annoy- 
ance or a still more cutting indifference. Then 
Sigurd would droop those expectant ears of his 
and return with dignity to his forsaken comrade. 
If his greeting were properly reciprocated, he 
would ramp joyously upon his fellow student and 
prance about her, leaping to the height of her 
shoulders in his ecstasy of good-will. 

His favorite laboratory was Lake Waban. In 
the summer afternoons he would tease to have us 
both escort him up for his swim and if on the way 
we tried to part company, one or the other turn- 
ing aside for a more pressing errand, Sigurd 
would herd us with ancestral art, jumping upon 
the deserter and gently pushing her back, or stand- 
ing in the path to block her progress, protesting 
all the while with coaxing whines, with expostu- 
lary barks and with all manner of collie eloquence. 
If we walked, on the other hand, close together, 
absorbed in talk, he would jealously push In be- 
tween us, as he often did when we were having 
a fireside tete-a-tete or bidding each other good 



148 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

night. He wished us to understand that Sigurd 
was the one to be loved and that all affections not 
directed toward Sigurd were superfluous. But 
when we both accepted his invitation to the lake, 
the three hundred acres of the college park hardly 
sufficed for his antics. Curveting about us till he 
seemed to be ten collies at once, flashing in ever 
widening circles over the level and over the 
slopes, bounding upon us with a storm of glee- 
ful sneezes, he would lead the way to Sigurd's 
Tub, as he considered it. If some one fell in with 
us and joined us on the walk, Sigurd, always of 
courteous instinct, would drop back and follow 
demurely, or amuse himself at a decorous distance 
by investigating holes, chasing squirrels and striv- 
ing with wild springs, scrambles, clawings, to 
climb the trees from whose boughs they mocked 
his clumsy efforts. But how rejoiced he would 
be when the interloper turned off! "There! 
Gone at last ! Now we will have fun, all by our- 
selves!'' Then he would cast about for some 
doughty deed to do, longing to dazzle us by a 
prodigious feat of strength and skill. If he could 
find a young tree that our too efficient forestry 
had cut down he would drag it along, Kte and 



COLLEGE CAREER 149 

break away Its branches, seize It by the middle 
and balance It In his mouth as a long pole, con- 
stantly lifting his bright eyes to us for admira- 
tion. 

Once arrived at the lake. It was our duty to 
find sticks and fling them out over the water to 
the extent of our strength, while Sigurd swam for 
them, the farther the better. As he would gal- 
lantly splash up from the shallows and, stick In 
mouth, climb the bushy bank, we had to run from 
the mighty shaking with which, delivering the 
prize, he loved to give us a shower-bath. After 
a few such plunges, Sigurd, while we rested on 
the bank, would appropriate the green apron of 
Mother Earth for a towel, rolling over and over 
on the turf to dry himself and completing the 
process by scampers In the sun. He disliked being 
wet, for although these swims In the lake ranked 
among his prime delights, at home he always re- 
sented and resisted a bath and, on a showery day, 
would often run In to the towel rack, pleading 
to be wiped dry, and would then forthwith run 
out Into the rain again. In our hottest weather 
he would slip off alone In the early morning to 
that still lake all sweet with water-lilies and would 



150 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

be gone for hours. A few times, In his younger 
years, our anxiety took us by mid-day to the shore, 
whence we would see a yellow head well out in 
the water. At our whistle, Sigurd would turn and 
swim back to us with an air of surprise and pleas- 
ure as if he had quite forgotten that such dear 
friends were to be found on land. The outcome 
was not so happy when, tormented in his fur coat 
by the heat, he had stolen off to one of his secret 
mire-pits and Indulged in a cool wallow. When 
he came home plastered and perfumed from head 
to tail, we would greet him with exclamations of 
disgust, which brought the Byronic melancholy 
Into his eyes, hustle him off to the rocks behind 
the house, fling pailfuls of warm water over him 
and do our best to scrape off his pollutions. On 
one of these occasions, a college-girl lover and 
Wallace raced him up to Waban and scrubbed 
and rinsed him until, so they said, the entire lake 
had changed color. 

In the autumn term Sigurd would take a spe- 
cial course in harvesting, frisking through a neigh- 
boring orchard and playing ball with the falling 
apples. The winter term he gave mainly to ath- 
letics and dramatics. How bewildered he was 



COLLEGE CAREER 151 

that first snowy morning when he ran out into 
a strange white ravine bounded by slippery walls 
and when, desperately lunging over one of these, 
he felt himself floundering in a drift! His first 
dubious venture on a crackling sheet of ice taxed 
his puppy courage, too, but he persisted in his 
quivering progress across our little Longfellow 
Pond and swaggered up the further side with his 
jauntiest sporting air. In later years he enjoyed 
nothing better than going skating with Lady 
Blanche, another member of our changeful house- 
hold, and on a stinging January morning he would 
outdo the frolics, that Cowper smiled to watch, of 
the dog who 

"with many a frisk 
Wide scampering, snatches up the drifted snow 
With ivory teeth, or ploughs it with his snout; 
Then shakes his powder'd coat, and barks for joy." 

As for dramatics, Sigurd loved to thrust his 
stick deep into a pile of russet leaves or sparkling 
snow, and then pretend that he was a sanguinary 
monster whose prey had escaped him, and dig and 
nose and scrape and scatter and tear and shuf- 
fle with frenzied energy, rumbling all the while 
growls of awful menace, until he had tossed it 



152 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

up to seize and worry, display to the audience 
always requisite for these performances, and then 
bury it again for a repetition of the melodrama. 
When the winter storms kept him in, his surg- 
ing vitality made him as restless as an imprisoned 
wind. If the Cave of iEolus boasted a house- 
keeper, she had our sympathy. All day long 
Sigurd would scoot and spin about the little range 
of rooms that we liked to have quiet and orderly, 
a very electric battery of mischief. He would 
pick quarrels with the rugs, scatter the pile of 
newspapers and dance a scandalous jig with that 
elderly, respectable Bostonian, The Transcript, 
He would bump into a gracefully leaning broom 
and a meditative mop, knocking their wooden wits 
together and bringing them to the floor with what 
he considered a beautiful bang. He would stir 
up civil war on the hearth till poker and tongs 
and dust-brush and bellows all set upon one an- 
other with hideous clang of combat. At last we 
would toss over to him, in desperation, an old 
pair of rubbers, and he would make love to one 
and try to swallow the other, playing as many 
parts as Bottom longed for, all the way from 
Pyramus to Lion. 



COLLEGE CAREER 153 

A new stage was provided for him when the 
storm was over and we undertook to shovel the 
drift off the piazza. He would instantly claim 
the star role of rival shovel, pawing the powdery 
heaps with delirious zest, or he would be the 
snow itself, ecstatically indignant at being swept 
down the steps. He played thrilling tragicom- 
edies with bones, too, especially with one mon- 
strous knuckle that might have belonged to the 
skeleton of Polyphemus, the prize of one of 
Sigurd's evening prowls. It was a bitter cold 
midnight, but our happy rebel, sporting with that 
giant joint, tossing it about in the snow, losing it 
on purpose, catching its glimmer by grace of the 
moon and madly pouncing on it once more, would 
not obey the bed-time whistle. He stretched him- 
self out, a saffron blotch on the white, and hugged 
his treasure, crunching away persuasively to con- 
vince us that the clock was wrong and it was still 
only dinner time. Our ignominious resort, in such 
a case, was to fetch from a certain pantry box, the 
daily object of Sigurd's supplicating sniffs, a piece 
of cake, and proceed to eat it, with vulgar smack 
of ostentatious relish, in the doorway, under the 
electric light. As ever, this stratagem brought 



154 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

our mutineer to terms. Giving the bone a last 
affectionate lick, he came bounding into the hall In 
time for the crumbs. But his high spirits were 
far from spent. Though he consented to play 
Yellow Caterpillar, curling up in the blanketed 
round clothes-basket which, for the winter, dis- 
placed his Thunder-and-LIghtnlng rug, he barked 
so often through the small hours, in his dreams 
or out, that our slumbers were literally curtailed. 
Rebuked into silence, he gnawed his leash in two, 
tipped over his basket and settled himself for a 
morning snooze on the forbidden lounge. 

It is obvious that Sigurd was not a model of 
virtue. We did not want him so much better 
than ourselves. "That dog would be improved 
by a good licking,'' said Joy-of-LIfe's visiting 
elder brother. But with all respect for elder 
brothers — my own had nearly hanged Sigurd by 
an ingenious contrivance of ropes and loops de- 
signed to enable me to unleash him on a summer 
morning from my sleeping balcony — we decided 
that we would rather have our collie with aU his 
frolic imperfections on his head than cowed into 
slavish obedience. Only once when, hardly out 
of puppyhood, he dashed from my side, as we 



COLLEGE CAREER 155 

were walking decorously on the sidewalk, and 
danced backward on his hind legs In front of a 
dodging automobile, out-barking Its distracted 
horn, did I attempt to whip him. He had barely 
escaped with life and limb and, determined to Im- 
press him, for his own safety, with his wrong- 
doing, I caught him by the collar, doubled the 
leash which I still carried but had almost ceased 
to use, and began to beat him with it about the 
head. Sigurd's astonished yelp was answered in 
an instant from the side street where dwelt the 
Sisters and, like a white knight of chivalry. Lad- 
die came charging out, thrusting himself between 
us, leaping upon me and demanding, with a wrath 
seldom seen in his gentle eyes, that I stop mal- 
treating his twin. 

Of course the brothers took the chance to run 
away together. It was slushy going and when 
Sigurd came home at seven o'clock, so tired that 
he could hardly drag one muddy foot after an- 
other, he was in shocking trim, his white hose and 
shirt-front soaked to a disreputable gray. It was 
unlucky, for his amateur dramatics were to be 
crowned that evening by a public part on the col- 
lege stage. He was to be Faithful Dog, watch- 



156 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

Ing beside his master, — a forgotten hero of the 
Revolution, — as that gallant young lieutenant 
slept away the hour before daybreak, when he 
was to be executed as a spy. At a low whistle 
of the rescuer beneath the window, Faithful Dog 
was to arouse his master by placing a wary paw 
upon the sleeper's breast and, when the lieutenant 
had made good his escape, remain behind to face 
the angry guard and be shot extremely dead In his 
master's place. Sigurd had thrown himself into 
this noble role with enthusiasm and rehearsed it 
several times with distinguished success. 

An escort of sophomores had been waiting for 
him in an agony of Impatience and, when he at 
last arrived, there could be no thought of dinner 
or a nap. Sigurd was hustled down to the laun- 
dry, put through merciless ablutions and rushed 
off to the college bam, our impromptu theater, 
in the snug little vehicle that our liveryman called 
his *'coop." Three or four girls were sardlned 
in with him, flourishing towels and doing their 
best to scrub him dry on the way. But it was a 
ruffled, soapsudsy and excessively drowsy Faith- 
ful Dog that trotted out upon the stage, yawned 
in the face of the rapturous greeting of his con- 



COLLEGE CAREER 157 

gregated friends, the Barn Swallows, jumped up 
on the prison cot, never meant for him, and rolled 
himself into a solid slumber-ball, refusing to 
wake, not even so much as blink, from first to 
last of the drama. With natural presence of 
mind, an essential quality In spies, the hero 
soliloquized to the audience that his Faithful 
Dog had been drugged, evoking a round of 
applause at which Sigurd dreamily flapped his 
tail. 

One role that he never could be induced to 
|>lay was that of Dandy. One Sunday afternoon, 
when he came limping In with his feet all cut and 
sore from a morning frisk over rough ice, I 
dressed them in discarded white kid gloves, tying 
each firmly round the ankle, and started out with 
Sigurd for a call on the Dryad. But our sturdy 
Viking resented such dudlsh apparel and would 
flump down, at brief Intervals, on the crusted 
drifts and tug away at that detested frippery with 
the result that, on his arrival, only the paw he 
thrust out at his amused hostess was still elegant 
in a tatter of white kid. 

Sigurd believed In elective courses rather than 
required. There were certain things that, as a 



158 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

matter of principle, he persistently refused to 
learn. Though by nature a dig, as my sister's 
flower-beds too often testified, not her most fer- 
vent remonstrances could convince him that bulbs 
and bones should not be planted together. His 
general attitude toward education was not unique. 
He had "come to college for the life." From the 
narrow paths of learning he bounded off in pur- 
suit of a *Vell-rounded development.'* His so- 
cial engagements were numerous and pressing. 
Often he had not time, between afternoon tea in 
one dormitory and a birthday spread in another, 
to scamper home for the plain parenthesis of a 
dog-biscuit dinner. Sometimes we would hear 
our truant, in the small hours, drop down upon 
the porch with a thud of utter exhaustion, and 
would learn by degrees, during the next day or 
two, that he had gone with a botany or geology 
class on a long morning tramp, played hare and 
hounds with one of the athletic teams all the after- 
noon and paraded the town till midnight with a 
serenading party. Often in the spring weather 
we would not set eyes on him for two days run- 
ning, or might, perhaps, catch a passing glimpse 
of our collie standing expectant on the stone wall 



COLLEGE CAREER 159 

by the East Lodge, watching the stream of girls 
and waiting for his next invitation. He would 
dutifully greet us with a bark and a caper and, 
if we were driving, jump down to follow the car- 
riage, but if one of his student chums came trip- 
ping along and threw her arms about him, shower- 
ing kisses on his sunny head, Sigurd would flourish 
his tail in tapturous response and off the two 
would race to ^'Math/* or ^'Lit." or ^'Chem.'^ or 
*'Comp." or whatever other branch of knowledge 
Young America cannot spare breath to pro- 
nounce. 

We would often see him lying Impartially 
across the knees of a group of girls studying to- 
gether in some green nook, his plume waving in 
the faces clustered over Horace or Livy. He had 
nothing but admiration for such guileless render- 
ings as ''The swift hunter pursuing the leper" 
or "He landed his boats In the sea," and the 
harder these latter-day Humanists hugged him, 
the more he sneezed and yawned In a very em- 
barrassment of joy, though when, absorbed In 
subjunctives, they pinched his silky ears a trifle 
too hard, he would quietly withdraw and hunt 
up a stick for them to throw for Sigurd. Not all 



i6o SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

his mates were wise in their good-will. They 
would pick up and toss, for him to chase and 
worry, rough-broken, splintery pieces of painted 
board or anything that came handy, and pres- 
ently a lugubrious dog would appear before his 
family, laying at our feet, perhaps, a well-licked 
strip of picket fence, and lifting for our ministra- 
tions a bleeding mouth, where the red was min- 
gled with a stain of sickly green. 

Sigurd took all manner of liberties even with 
seniors. At home, though he would gaze into the 
refrigerator with deep interest, he never ventured 
to insert so much as his nose, and though a dish 
of candies might be standing on a low table easily 
in reach, he merely looked and waggled. Only 
once, on a Tophet-hot afternoon, while a guest, 
absorbed in talk, sat oblivious of the plate of ice- 
cream melting on her knee, did Sigurd slip in his 
craving tongue and accelerate the process. But 
with the college girls he knew no such restraints. 
He was familiar with all their chafing-dish cor- 
ners and, entering by any door he found ajar, 
he would help himself to a lunch of fudge and 
wafers before looking about to choose the softest 
heap of couch cushions for his nap. When a cut 



COLLEGE CAREER i6i 

foot made walking painful, he would prevail upon 
the girls to carry him, great fellow that he was, 
and we would sometimes come upon him dangling 
across a slender hand-chair, while his panting 
bearers struggled up the hill to College Hall. 
On seeing us, he would scramble down and sheep- 
ishly make off with an exaggerated limp. Once 
we chanced on a group of freshmen holding a pic- 
nic party with King Sigurd enthroned on a mossy 
log in the center, his gilt-paper crown tipped 
rakishly over one eye. He delighted in picnics, 
cross-country walks, the May-day frolic on the 
campus, and constantly Imperiled his life by frisk- 
ing about on tennis court, golf links and archery 
fields. The girls would use him as a postman, 
sending him from one to another with notes, not 
always delivered, swinging from his collar, and 
he often appeared at the door of a college fair 
or other festivity wearing the ticket which some 
lavish chum had bought for him. He was about 
the college grounds and buildings so much that 
we feared he might become a nuisance, as well 
as depart from the few principles of collie con- 
duct we had labored to instill. Much to his indig- 
nation, therefore, we made him address to the 



i62 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

students, through the columns of our little col- 
lege weekly, 

A DOGGEREL PETITION 

Sigurd begs to say to his friends 

That for certain inscrutable ends, 

Quite apart from his own sweet way, 

There are laws he ought to obey; 

And because the sight of a girl 

Puts the tip of his tail in a curl, 

And sends, with a pit-a-pat start, 

The commandments out of his heart, 

He has to entreat you should 

All help poor Sigurd be good. 

'Tisn't easy to choke one's barks, 

With squirrels making remarks; 

'Tisn't easy to travel home 

With girls enticing to roam. 

All nice things seem to be naughty; 

So it's not that Sigurd's grown haughty. 

When he meets you at eve on the meadow, 

A yellow scud in the shadow, 

And passes your grocery bag 

With only a wistful wag;. 

The New Year's good resolutions. 

If broken, bring retributions; 

So Sigurd beseeches — 'tis hard — 

That you shouldn't call him off guard; 

Nor tempt that inquisitive rover, 

That affectionate follower, over 

The threshold of College Hall; 

Nor let him trustfully sprawl 

In the pathway of many feet. 

And don't, though the sin is swee^ 



COLLEGE CAREER 163 

Don't, for the gleam of his eyes, 
His expectant ears' uprise. 
For his nose's coaxing nudge, 
Feed Sigurd infinite fudge. 

That helped him through with one generation 
of college girls, but after three or four years a 
fresh appeal had to be made, especially in view 
of the fact that Sigurd had suddenly resumed the 
dangerous trick, first taken up on his wild scam- 
pers with Laddie, of jumping at horses' heads, 
and we found some of his younger classmates, for 
Sigurd belonged to every class In turn, encour- 
aging him In It, because he was "so pretty" in his 
leaps. Hence once more he reluctantly lapsed 
Into verse and recommended to his intimates 

A NOSTRUM FOR SIGURD 

It is wrong to spring 

At a horse's nose; 
At that quivery thing 
It is wrong to spring. 
With tail for a wing 

I may chase the crows, 
But 'tis wrong to spring 

At a horse's nose. 

Call me back from the horses 

With no, no, noes; 
When I try snap courses 
Call me back from tlie horses. 



i64 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

Though my remorse is 

A transient pose, 
Call me back from the horses 

With no, no, noes. 

I'm only a collie, 

As Wellesley knows; 
Though ever so jolly 
I'm only a collie. 
Save Sigurd from folly. 

For folly has foes, 
And I'm only a collie. 

As Wellesley knows. 

There was a perilous season, after a village 
Airedale had unadvisedly nipped a teasing small 
boy, when our hysterical local legislation ordered 
all dogs into muzzles, commanding the police to 
shoot at sight any canine wayfarer not so 
equipped. Sigurd, of course, detested his muzzle 
and though he would sulkily fetch it when he saw 
us making ready for a walk, he would grov/1 at 
It and worry it until we had it snapped on, when 
he would often turn mournfully back from the 
door or lie down before it literally In flat rebel- 
lion, rather than take the air under such humili- 
ating and uncomfortable conditions. He soon be- 
gan to exercise his ingenuity, however. In the get- 
ting rid of that encumbrance, and again and again, 



COLLEGE CAREER 165 

having gone forth a model of compliance with 
the law, he would come bounding back, muzzle- 
less, triumphant, expecting congratulations. It 
was hard to find a make of muzzle that he could 
not push off with his paws or scrape off under a 
fence or rub off between close-growing trees, and 
impossible to find one that he could not coax his 
compassionate glrl-chums to take off for him. 
Melted by his pleading whines, they would slip 
the muzzle down from his jaws so that he wore 
it as a pendant over his white vest, a compromise 
that perplexed our honest college policeman, who, 
Sigurd's neighbor and friend, solved the problem 
by consistently turning his back and refusing to 
see the dog at all. But one well-nigh fatal day a 
special officer, called in by our stern selectmen for 
the purpose of hunting down all lawless dogs, be- 
held Sigurd disporting himself in the public road, 
his muzzle, as so often, gayly flapping under his 
chin. According to the man's bewildered account, 
no sooner had he drawn his revolver and taken 
good aim at the offender, than "a mob of girls, 
coming from nowhere and everywhere," sudden- 
ly enveloped his intended victim and swept the 
dog off in their midst to the campus. But the of- 



i66 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

ficer had a determined jaw of his own. He kept 
watch for that fawn colHe and the next time he 
caught sight of Sigurd, again with a swinging 
muzzle, he ran a rope through our poor boy's 
collar and was dragging him off to the town lock- 
up and execution ground when again an excited 
throng of nymphs blocked the way. 

"How can you be so cruel?" blazed one of 
Sigurd's fondest playmates, as a dozen arms were 
thrown about the collie. 

*'I'm no rougher with that there dog than he 
is with me," protested the young officer, purple 
not only through embarrassment but from the tug 
of war in which he and Sigurd had been match- 
ing strength. "He may be your college pet, but 
his manners ain't no-way ladylike." 

Meanwhile one of the girlish hands caressing 
Sigurd's neck must have succeeded in slipping a 
buckle, for suddenly his head shot back through 
the collar, left as a keepsake to the dog-catcher, 
and our Innocent was far on his way toward the 
safe shelter of home. 

This period of persecution extended over some 
months, for the muzzles had a bad effect on dog 
tempers and there were more cases of snapping 



COLLEGE CAREER 167 

and nipping than the town, in Sigurd's lifetime, 
had ever known, though no trace of rabies was de- 
tected. It was an anxious season for dog-owners. 
Our neighboring professor of psychology, she 
who specialized in spaniels, was overheard by a 
guest one evening wearily informing a new litter 
of eight: 

"Puppies, this has been a sad day. This morn- 
ing your ma bit the postman, and this afternoon 
your pa bit the doctor." 

It was a relief to many households when at 
last the selectmen put their minds on something 
else. 

Although Sigurd was a member of all classes, 
as well as faculty, and of all societies, he bore, 
as mascot, a special relation to the Class of 191 1, 
whose color he wore by grace of nature. Glori- 
ous he was to behold on Field Day, his coat, well 
brushed for the occasion, glistening in the sun, 
a great bow of yellow ribbon standing out like 
a butterfly from the top of his collar, wagging all 
over with joyous self-importance as he stood in 
the front rank of his class, impartially barking 
applause for both their triumphs and defeats. 

With him, as with the girls, the spring term 



i68 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

was the climax of the college year, though not pre- 
cisely an academic climax. Sigurd still found time 
to drop in at a lecture occasionally, flumping down 
beside some favorite fellow-student for a brief 
repose and rousing now and then to thrust up a 
sentimental paw for a shake. But he had many 
class-meetings to attend, where, when ^'Further 
Remarks" were called for, he has been known to 
respond with a loud bark, — a recognized inde- 
corum in the college buildings. But on the whole, 
he kept the rules save in so far as he might be 
considered **a musical instrument" in use "out of 
recreation hours." 

The spring term bloomed out in guests like 
crocuses and Sigurd made a point of attending as 
many as possible of the luncheons and teas given 
in their honor. An English lady, a poet and a 
visionary, a presence like a flame, was one after- 
noon addressing a choice assemblage in our 
oriental parlor on the mysteries of the Bahist 
faith. A torch-bearer of the Persian prophet, 
she was telling of her first interview with All 
Baha on Mount Carmel. 

"And the Master greeted me thus: *0 Child 
of the Kingdom r" . 



COLLEGE CAREER 169 

Bump went something against the door, which 
swung wide, admitting Sigurd, who saluted the 
company with a comprehensive wave of his tail. 

"You beautiful creature!" cried the English- 
woman, winning him to her with an outstretched 
hand, "I am sure you are a Child of the King- 
dom,'* and Sigurd wagged, came up for a pat and 
dropped down at her feet to slumber out the rest 
of her impassioned discourse, waking promptly 
with the arrival of refreshments. 

But our Child of the Kingdom, on the very day 
after he had received this accolade, came home 
to dinner, for which he had no appetite, not only 
with a deep scratch, inflicted by the claw of some 
profane, anti-Bahist cat, down one side of his 
face, but with his white and golden hair all mat- 
ted in brown streaks and patches, in witness that 
a freshman saucepan had spilled its fudge upon 
him. Where he could get at himself to lick, he 
enjoyed it very much, but he was deplorably sticky 
on top. 

In the spring, too, there were more dogs about 
the campus, and battles were frequent. In the 
interests of academic fellowship we did our best 
to steer Sigurd clear of encounters with profes- 



170 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

serial champions, especially Jerry, an Irish ter- 
rier who would fight with his own shadow rather 
than not fight at all, but one morning our chapel 
vestibule was the scene of an encounter that Isaac 
Watts might well have called horrendous. 

The aggressor was Coco, a fierce little Boston 
bull and the pride of one of the town's most hon- 
ored citizens. Coco fought by method and a 
very effective method it was. He would sneak 
up to his chosen antagonist, fly at the forehead, 
tear the flesh so that the streaming blood blinded 
his enemy and then try for a grip on the throat. 
Half the dogs in the village already bore Coco's 
mark when, one March morning, Joy-of-Life and 
I went in to chapel, leaving Sigurd, as usual, to 
wait for us outside. As a dog, whom we did not 
pause to identify, was trotting down the avenue, 
we laid strict injunctions on Sigurd not to get into 
a scrap. 

The organ was calling all hearts to worship, 
and heads were already bowed, when suddenly 
Sigurd, his earnest eyes trying in vain to explain 
his difficulties, pressed in against our knees. This 
was a grave breach of chapel decorum, and Joy- 
of-Life, rising instantly, led him down the aisle. 



COLLEGE CAREER 171 

As she opened the door into the vestibule, Coco 
was upon him, and the snarling fury of a dog- 
fight jarred against the solemn strains of the or- 
gan. I slipped out to find Coco hanging from 
Sigurd's throat, and Sigurd, blood streaming from 
his forehead over his face, so hampered by a ring 
of hands pulling on his collar that he could only 
snap his jaws in air, unable to see or reach his 
foe. The choir, arrayed for the processional, 
had broken line and were banging Coco with 
hymn books, while everybody was wildly issuing 
orders to everybody else. 

"Let the dogs alone, girls. Look out for your- 
selves." 

"Let Sigurd go. Give him a chance to fight." 

"Choke Coco off." 

"Twist Coco's tail." 

"Bring water." 

*^DorCt put your hands between them, girls. 
Keep away." 

The janitor, the only man on the scene, had 
discreetly climbed into a high window-seat, and 
it was one of the slenderest, most fiowerlike maid- 
ens there who finally jerked a half-strangled Coco 
loose and flung him forth from the sacred por- 



172 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

tals. The choir promptly reformed in rank and, 
a trifle flushed and disheveled but chanting more 
lustily than ever, swung up the aisle with the air 
of the Church Militant. Only the few who were 
slightly bitten remained behind to be conducted 
by Joy-of-Life to the hospital for immediate at- 
tention to their wounds, while Sigurd and I made 
for home, marking the trail with our blood. No 
real harm was done. Coco's owner, though se- 
cretly convinced that Sigurd did all the biting, in- 
sisted on paying the doctor's bills and, a few days 
after the encounter, Sigurd, with a scarred fore- 
head, welcomed his injured defenders to a dinner- 
party, at which I presided with my arm in a sling. 
Sigurd seemed to feel a dim responsibility for that 
hurt of mine and, as long as I wore a bandage, 
would come up at intervals to give it a penitent 
lick. 

At all the festivals of the spring term Sigurd 
deemed his attendance indispensable. He fell in 
with the parades, frisked out into the midst of 
the campus dances, and once, at least, took a con- 
spicuous part in the Tree Day pageant. A grace- 
ful, carmine-clad Narcissus had died to slow music 
on the bank of Longfellow Fountain. The wood- 



COLLEGE CAREER 173 

nymphs and water-nymphs, Diana and her train, 
even the hilltop Oreads had tripped off the sylvan 
stage, but the audience, massed on the other side 
of the pool, refused to take the hint and, instead 
of breaking up, still sat spell-bound, their gaze 
fastened on poor Narcissus, who, cramped in the 
dying attitude, could not conceive any dramatic 
way of coming to life again. So we bade Sigurd: 
*'Go find," and after two false starts, once for a 
squirrel and once for a stick, he sped straight for 
Narcissus and, anxiously thrusting his nose into 
her face, recognized a special friend and broke 
into loud barks of joy, while, throwing her arm 
about him, she sprang no less gladly to her feet. 
The audience thought it all a part of the pageant, 
the prevailing opinion being that Sigurd was play- 
ing the role of Cerberus and welcoming Narcissus 
to Hades. 

But for all his years of enthusiastic college at- 
tendance, Sigurd never took a degree. Not even 
his own Class of 191 1 was allowed to carry out 
its design of dressing their mascot in a specially 
made cap and gown and leading him with them 
in the Commencement procession. His B. A. 
stood only for Beloved Animal. 



TO SIGURD 

Not one blithe leap of welcome? Can you lie 

Under this woodland mold, 

More still 

Than broken daffodil, 

When I, 

Home from too long a roving, 

Come up the silent hill? 

Dear, wistful eyes, 

White ruff and windy gold 

Of collie coat so oft caressed, 

Not one quick thrill 

In snowy breast, 

One spring of jubilant surprise. 

One ecstasy of loving? 

Are all our frolics ended? Never more 

Those royal romps of old. 

When one, 

Playfellow of the sun. 

Would pour 

Adventures and romances 

Into a morning run; 

Off and away, 

A flying glint of gold, 

Startling to wing a husky choir 

Of crows whose dun 

Shadows would tire 

Even that wild speed? Unscared to-day 

They hold their weird seances. 



Ever you dreamed, legs twitching, you would catch 

A crow, O leaper bold. 

Next time, 

Or chase to branch sublime 

That batch 

Of squirrels daring capture 

In saucy pantomime; 

Till one spring dawn. 

Resting amid the gold 

Of crocuses, Death stole on you 

From that far clime 

Where dreams come true. 

And left upon the starry lawn 

Your form without your rapture. 



And was Death's whistle then so wondrous sweet 

Across the glimmering wold 

That you 

Would trustfully pursue 

Strange feet? 

When I was gone, each morrow 

You sought our old haunts through, 

Slower to play, 

Drooping in faded gold. 

Now it is mine to grieve and miss 

My comrade true. 

Who used to kiss 

With eager tongue such tears away, 

Coaxing a smile from sorrow. 



I know not what life is, nor what is death, 

Nor how vast Heaven may hold 

All this 

Earth-beauty and earth-bliss. 

Christ saith 

That not a sparrow falleth 

'—O songs of sparrow faith! — 

But God is there. 



May not a leap of gold 

Yet greet me on some gladder hill, 

A shining wraith, 

Rejoicing still, 

As in those hours we found so fair, 

To follow where love calleth? 



FAREWELLS 

"The door of Death is made of gold, 
That mortal eyes cannot behold." 

— ^Blake's Dedication to Queen Charlotte. 

We were slow to realize that Sigurd was having 
too many birthdays. That guardian figure 
stretched out on the south porch just above the 
steps, shining like an embodied welcome, had be- 
come a part of life itself. Indeed, a caller, not 
famed for tact, after surveying our Volsung for 
some time in silence, dropped the cryptic remark : 
"How much a dog comes to look like the family!'' 
Brightening our busy months with golden glints 
of romp and mischief and caress, he kept his run 
of birthdays like festivals which brought no warn- 
ing with them. 

They were celebrated with becoming pomp, with 
much-wrapped gifts that he rejoiced to open him- 
self and often with a yellow tea. As his taste in- 
clined to broad and simple effects, there would 

be a giant sunflower in the center of the table, with 

177 



178 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

Strips of goldenrod emanating from it like rays. 
The guests, his best-beloved of all ages and con- 
ditions, would drink Sigurd's health in orangeade 
and feast in his honor on sponge cake. From the 
day of Poor Ellen to that of Housewife Honey- 
voice, Amelia, a young and comely Irish Protes- 
tant, reigned in the kitchen and made it her pride 
to celebrate Sigurd's anniversaries with all due 
splendor, though even then she would not inter- 
mit the daily scoldings to which she attributed his 
very gradual growth in grace. For still he would 
run away at Intervals and wallow in all iniquity. 
If the prodigal returned by daylight and found us 
together, he would disport himself at our feet in a 
brief agony of penitence. As he lay on his back, 
writhing with remorse and apparently trying to 
clasp his paws In supplication, we would reproach 
him, to the accompaniment of his hollow groans, 
until our gravity would break down. Then he 
would cheerfully scramble up and fetch us his lat- 
est rubber toy, with a coaxing invitation to let by- 
gones be bygones and have a frisk with Sigurd. 
If he came home under cover of darkness, he 
would shamelessly go straight to his own piazza 
corner, venting an Indignant grunt, like an out- 



FAREWELLS 179 

raged man of the house, If he found his supper 
soggy and his bed not made. 

The birthday tea^s, though they broug|ht so 
many of his friends across the threshold, were not 
an unmixed joy to Sigurd. The flaunting bow of 
new, stiff, yellow ribbon tickled his ears, until he 
had succeeded In working It around, a rumpled 
knot, under his chin, and worse yet were the 
wreaths of yellow wild flowers that the small fin- 
gers of some of his child neighbors had woven 
for his neck. His share of his own birthday cake, 
too, was more hyglenlcally apportioned than he 
approved. What Is a speck of yellow frosting on 
a colhe's long red tongue? But Amelia saw to It 
that his birthday dinner was after his own heart, 
— fresh corncake, rice and liver, while now and 
then some devoted sophomore, even though the 
long vacation had put a thousand miles between 
them, would send him a home-made chocolate 
cream as large as a saucer, at which he was al- 
lowed only to sniff and nibble. 

We may have noticed that Sigurd's girth was 
ampler and his bearing more sedate than In his 
younger days, but still he was the first In every 
frolic and almost as fleet as a deer. He roused 



K8o SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

one at the edge of the woods one morning when 
he was out for an early airing with Joy-of-Life 
and chased it across the meadows so fast and far 
that she was in dismay lest he overtake the beau- 
tiful creature and pull it down. Even to the last 
he would let no dog pass him. His frankest ad- 
mirer and fellow-runner through his sunset years 
was a simple-minded young collie whom Sigurd 
would outwit by wheeling sharply, when he felt 
Sandy gaining on him, and making off at right 
angles while the precipitate pursuer sped on for 
some distance in the old direction. But the goal 
was what Sigurd chose to make it, and Sandy, be- 
wildered by these subtle tactics, always believed 
himself outrun. 

We had come to regard a walk without Sigurd 
as hardly a walk at all. Perhaps we observed that 
he found the heat, which brought out his torment- 
ing eczema, a little harder to bear from summer 
to summer, but our crisp, crackling winters re- 
vived him to all manner of puppy antics. I re- 
member, like a picture, one frosty afternoon, the 
evergreens festooned with ice, while the leafless 
trees, struck by the level rays of the western sun, 
glistened with rainbow crystals. Through this 



FAREWELLS i8i 

enchanted world, as through the heart of a dia- 
mond, Joy-of-LIfe and Sigurd were coming home. 
Sigurd, barking his glad music, was bounding 
hither and thither over the sparkling crust, now 
trying to fulfill his contract to keep all chickadees 
and nut-hatches, blue jays and juncos, from alight- 
ing on the earth, and now convinced that at last 
the moment had come when he was to realize his 
supreme ambition, inherited from Ralph, and 
catch a crow. Their sardonic caws above his 
head, as they flapped heavily from pine to pine, 
made him so furious that he would pounce on 
their black, sliding shadows, while Joy-of-Life, 
her cheeks apple-bright with the cold, laughed at 
him so merrily that he took it for applause. 

Yet change was busy about our collie, who wel- 
comed no changes but loved his world exactly as 
it was. We sold the first home and moved into 
a more spacious one that we had built on a strip 
of untamed land hard by. Then a street came, 
and more houses, and quietly the wildwood drew 
away from us. Within our own bounds, at least, 
we strove to keep the forest growth in its own 
careless beauty, but never a man stepped on the 
place, brother or guest or gardener or state war- 



i82 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

den or whosoever, but, driven by the deep Instinct 
of the pioneer, he must needs go stealthily forth 
with ax or saw or shears and lay about him in our 
happy tangle. The worst of it was that we had 
to appear grateful. 

Sigurd accepted his new abode with but a pass- 
ing bewilderment. Racing up from the train on 
his return from a summer in the mountains with 
Joy-of-Life, he was whistled into the Scarab while 
yet too utterly absorbed in the rapture of his 
greetings to heed where he was. After a little 
he looked about him in obvious surprise and per- 
plexity and set out at once on a tour of investiga- 
tion, trotting from cellar to attic, nosing into the 
closets and under the shelves, sniffing at the fa- 
miliar desks and bookcases and recognizing with 
a wag his own chair and rug. As soon as might 
be he was out of doors, examining porches and 
paths. Then he crossed the intervening bit of 
wilderness, granite ledge matted over with the 
red-berried kinnikinic, and woofed for admittance 
at his accustomed door. He was kindly received 
and allowed to go about as he liked, upstairs and 
downstairs and into my lord's chamber, but the 
furniture was not his furniture, the smells were 



FAREWELLS 183 

not his smells, and within ten minutes he had quit- 
ted those rooms, scene of so many puppy exploits, 
to enter them no more. He knew the difference 
between house and home. 

Yet our new holding did not seem to Sigurd 
nor to us entirely natural until he had cut one 
of his unfortunate paws on a broken bottle left 
by the carpenters as a souvenir and had strewn 
steps and driveway and lawn with shreds of cot- 
ton bandages and adhesive plaster. "When is a 
clutter not a clutter?*' asked my mother, and an- 
swered her own conundrum : "When Sigurd does 
it.'* 

In a snug corner against the south wall of the 
Scarab stood a massive and elegant erection, with 
gable roof and olive-green door, that only the 
unsophisticated called a kennel. It was "Sigurd's 
House," and as such he accepted it, counting its 
artistically shingled walls and heavy layers of 
sheathing paper no more than his just deserts. He 
delighted in its deep bed of fresh straw which 
tickled him most agreeably as he rolled over and 
over in it. He found it an exciting by-play, too, 
to dash in with stick or bone and lose it under 
his bedding, which he would proceed to scratch 



i84 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

up with all the fury of a New England matron in 
housecleanlng time. Then he would come swag- 
gering out with the air of duty done, shaking his 
own skin. Sigurd's House was such a palace that 
the children of the neighborhood liked to play in 
it, but our collie deemed this high trespass and, 
from the screened study porch, would roar indig- 
nant protest when five or six chubby tots, with 
that saucy black spaniel, Curly, would all squeeze 
|n together. 

To the Scarab came new friends for Sigurd 
with new caresses, to which he always made cor- 
dial and courteous response. Amelia crossed the 
ocean to a waiting bridegroom and a happy home 
of her own, but Housewife' Honey-voice, with her 
little Esther, petted Sigurd even more devotedly. 

Sigurd's only difficulty with Housewife Honey- 
voice, the only shadow on their sympathy, arose 
from the delicacy of her appetite by which she 
was inclined, at first, to measure his. When her 
enthusiasm and culinary skill persuaded the fam- 
ily to go on a vegetable diet, Sigurd gave us clear- 
ly to understand that we need not count him in. 
And when I came home, one evening, from a 
week's motor trip, Sigurd barely waited for his 



FAREWELLS 185 

customary chant of welcome before gripping my 
dress and leading me to the refrigerator. 

"Hasn't Sigurd had his dinner yet?" 

*'Why, yes, an hour ago." 

*'Nonsense, boy! You Ve not hungry. Nobody 
is hungry just after dinner." 

"What a whopper!" sighed Sigurd, as he pat- 
tered after me back to the study. 

No sooner had I turned my attention to the 
accumulation of letters on my desk than again 
Sigurd pulled gently, yet with determination, at 
my skirt and insisted on a second promenade to 
the refrigerator. 

"He really is hungry. How much have you 
been giving him for dinner?" 

But when I saw the measure, I heaped his plate, 
while he eagerly watched the process, waving his 
tail in triumph, but hurrying once across the 
kitchen to snuggle his head against the knee of 
Housewife Honey-voice, looking up at her with 
those comprehending, trustful eyes that said: 

"You didn't mean to starve dear Sigurd, and 
now that you know how big my hollow is, it will 
be all right forever." 

Every autumn a new horde of freshmen fell in 



i86 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

love with him and visiting alumnae embraced him 
in mid-campus. Toward the Freshman Twins, 
who gladdened the Scarab one year, he conducted 
himself like a sophomore, humoring their childish 
ways, guiding them through the college labyrinth, 
serving as a towel for their homesick tears and 
partaking freely of their consoling fudge, but 
all with a comical air of condescension. He was 
himself accustomed to the best society, even se- 
niors. Our gracious college president made him 
welcome to her veranda, as she sat at tea among 
her roses; a beloved frequenter of the Scarab, 
Hoops-of-Steel, though clinging to her preference 
for boys, accorded him a true if tempered friend- 
ship; and even Scholar Carol, our fifteenth-cen- 
tury historian, who affected the fireside sphinx and 
had named a particularly gallant kitten Eddy IV, 
counted him only a little lower than a cat. As 
for the children on our hill, they hugged him to 
the limit of endurance. His warmest admirer 
among them was Wee-wee, a rosy bunch of un- 
weariable energy, who, when she came to us of 
an afternoon in order to give her exhausted par- 
ents a brief respite, would wear out the entire 
family as, one by one, we undertook to amuse her, 



FAREWELLS 187 

and would finally fling herself upon Sigurd, riding 
on his back, rolling him over and over and ex- 
amining his paws with an envious admiration that 
broke forth in the remark: *'Wen I'm old and 
big like Sigurd, maybe I'll have feet on my 
hands." 

For two lively years a brace of graduate stu- 
dents. Cherub and Seraph, folded their wings be- 
neath the Scarab rooftree. Cherub was a bit 
afraid, at first, of "that bouncing yellow ele^ 
phant," but Seraph instantly became Sigurd's very 
pink of playmates. Every morning they would 
start off early for the college library, scampering 
across the landscape at a rate that sent the spar- 
rows fluttering from their path like so many ir- 
regular verbs. Between the meadow and the 
campus is a perilous stretch of railway tracks and 
trolley tracks, and here Sigurd would assume full 
charge of his companion. If the whistle of an 
engine, as they drew near the crossing, cut the air, 
Sigurd would leap upon her and, with his paws 
upon her breast, hold her back until the train had 
hurtled by, when he would lead her triumphantly 
across under the trailing plume of smoke. Every 
autumnal Sunday they spent hours together in 



i88 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

the woods, from which the Seraph would bring 
home gentians, wych-hazel and a lyric, and Sigurd 
a ruff all tangled up with burrs. Winter did not 
daunt their zeal. They formed themselves Into 
a rescue expedition and saved from the frost all 
manner of wild-flower roots, which the Seraph 
arranged in rows of pots placed on boards 
stretched from a little table in her room to her 
south window. Alas for sweet Saint Charity! 
There came a day when Sigurd, wishing to study 
the scenery to verify a suspicion of a dog burglar 
after his treasure-trove of bones, sprang up and 
struck his forefeet on the edge of the nearest 
board with such violence that the whole struc- 
ture came crashing down, enveloping him in a 
flying ruin of pots and plants and earth and wa- 
ter. He did not stay to help the Seraph clear 
up the landslide, but remembered a pressing en- 
gagement in the remotest corner of the attic. 

Through DecembeT these happy comrades ex- 
plored the fringes of the forest for glowing vines 
to serve as Christmas decorations, and in the 
whirling snowstorms of a peculiarly ferocious lit- 
tle February they would come romping home, two 
white objects plunging through the drifts, look- 



FAREWELLS 189 

!ng like Peary and one of his huskies just back 
from the North Pole. Joy-of-Life had been in 
Egypt that winter, seeking health after a grave 
illness, but she came again with April, more wel- 
come than the spring. Sigurd bounded to her 
shoulders in ecstasy of greeting, his coat ruddy 
in the sun. He shone more than ever with a su- 
preme content as he sat erect between us while 
we motored through the miracle of May, under 
red-budded maples and oaks whose baby leaves, 
while the orioles shouted to them to hurry up, 
were trembling from misty pink to golden green. 
He did not care to run with the machine, however 
slowly it was driven, but saved his energies for 
the long rambles with the Seraph, as she went 
questing for anemone and dogwood, bellwort, 
violets, columbine, lady slippers and all 

"our shining little sisters 
Of the forest and the fields." 

As the days grew warmer, he would forget the 
admonitions of previous springs and all his good 
resolutions, and take a roll, now and then, to Sis- 
ter Jane's wrath and anguish, in a bed of jon- 
,quils or yellow tulips, claiming that their color 



igo SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

made them his by royal right. When we scolded 
him, he took refuge with the Seraph, though even 
she was causing him bitter annoyance, as June and 
Commencement drew near, by her attentions to 
a fuzzy puppy. Puck, whom she visited almost 
daily at collie kennels two miles away. He was a 
prize puppy and it disgusted Sigurd beyond barks 
to see the fuss we all made over certain dog- 
show awards that Puck gave the Seraph to bring 
home, a green ribbon not worth the chewing and 
an empty cut-glass vase. When Puck, on the eve 
of Seraph's departure, was himself brought to 
the Scarab and a journeying basket was equipped 
for him, Sigurd sulked in the shabby depths of 
his dear old chair. All the small folk of our 
neighborhood flocked in to pat Puppy Ki-yl, as 
Joy-of-Life and I privily dubbed our guest, but 
only Wee-wee, whose own name for the mite was 
"Minister — Ittle Teeny Minister, coz he Stan's 
on his back legs an' jiggles his arms an' pweaches 
at us," divined Sigurd's jealous misery. She snug- 
gled down in the chair beside him, hugging the 
yellow ball into which he had rolled himself and 
solicitously explaining that "Minister Is the best 
'Ittle dog, and Sigurd is the best gweat big dog," 



FAREWELLS igi 

but the Volsung did not care for a divided homage 
and shook his ears at all puppy worshipers. 

Then the Seraph disappeared, as all his stu- 
dent lovers, one after another, would disappear. 
Letters came back to him and gifts, but he could 
not puzzle out what these had to do with the 
dancing playmate no longer to be found on hill- 
side or by lake. Nor could he foresee the day 
when that ridiculous Puck, grown into a noble 
collie, would in his turn sorely miss the Seraph, 
who had sailed away, on the ship that bore an- 
other of Sigurd's most devoted Wellesley lassies, 
to France. There were dogs on that ship. Profes- 
sor Peggy and her scarred comrades, veterans of 
war, that had been sent over, like wounded French 
officers, to instruct, and were now returning to 
duty at the front. But Puck, too old for the Red 
Cross training, was left behind, sniffing up and 
down the garden paths in patient search for his 
dainty mistress, who, arrayed in gas-mask and 
trench-helmet, was serving from -^ battered cam- 
ionette hot coffee and cocoa to our boys in khaki 
just behind the trenches. 

In the Orchard, too, the venerable Cousin for 
whom Sigurd since puppyhood had cherished a 



192 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

romantic attachment, the white-haired inamorata 
whom he would run to meet with his most gro- 
tesque waggle, was no longer to be found in the 
familiar nooks from which Laddie had long since 
disappeared. And now that the all-beloved Elder 
Sister lay mortally ill, Sigurd pattered over day 
after day to look in at the sickroom and invite 
a stroking from the delicate hand that would rest 
so languidly upon his lifted head. Sometimes he 
carried her a yellow chrysanthemum or a cluster 
of cream-colored tea-roses tied to his collar. And 
when she had passed to Paradise through brain- 
wandering memories of Italy, as through a vesti- 
bule of beauty, Sigurd coaxed long at the closed 
door, whining softly, calling to his friend, troubled 
by the silence but incredulous of death. 

Because of their vanishing ways, Sigurd had 
early come to look on college girls in general as 
an inconstant factor in life and accepted their at- 
tentions with the casual air of a confirmed old 
bachelor, but his faithfulness to his friends of 
riper age never wavered. Even to the last he 
always raised for the Lady of Cedar Hill his rap- 
turous lyric cry, though it would sometimes em- 
barrass him by breaking into a hoarse and husky 



FAREWELLS 193 

squeak. He had special ways with each of us. 
He kept one piquant game for my mother, who, 
while he wagged his tail in ever wilder circles at 
her, would wag her Congre Rationalist in exact 
mockery at him, until he would make a maddened 
leap and snatch that sacred sheet from her hand. 
But he was gentle with old people, even in his 
frolics, and from the first had felt a certain re- 
sponsibility for their safety. Joy-of-LIfe had left 
him late one afternoon, while he was still a young- 
ster, to guard her mother's nap on the piazza 
couch, but a white flash of Laddie, temptation In- 
carnate, at the foot of the hill, had sent him 
careering off into the gloaming. Rising hurriedly 
to call him back, confused by the sudden waking, 
his charge had missed her footing in the dusk and 
fallen down the steps. Her first clear conscious- 
ness was of Sigurd standing over her, licking her 
face and hands with a penitent tongue, nor would 
he leave her all that evening, lying on the edge 
of her dress as she sat and trotting close beside 
her whenever she crossed the room. And when, 
touched by his concern, she bent to him and said: 
**I wasn't really hurt, and Sigurd was a good dog 
to come back," he joyously flopped over on his 



194 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

spine and presented his snowy shirt-front for a 
forgiving pat. 

A household dear to Sigurd was that in which 
two of our college professors, long retired, dwelt 
in sisterly affection. He bore himself with the 
utmost discretion there, as if aware of a dignity 
and fragility beyond the wont of households. The 
classicist, whose Greek precision of accent gave 
beauty to her least remark, would introduce 
Sigurd to callers from abroad as "one of our 
most distinguished citizens," while the botan- 
ist, prisoned in a hooded chair on wheels, — ah, 
the feet that had so often and so lightly carried 
her in a day over twenty miles and more of the 
green earth she loved ! — liked to have him escort 
her on her pathetic airings. He was not with her, 
but attending his own family on a drive one day, 
when we saw in the village square before us a sud- 
den commotion, people running from all sides to- 
ward that familiar little carriage, which, rashly 
left standing at the edge of the curb with its hood 
open toward the wind, had been overset, so that 
the poor lady, strapped to the seat, was standing 
on her bonnet. Sigurd reached her first of all and 
when, shocked by the jar into a momentary obliv- 



FAREWELLS 195 

ion, she looked up, *'it was/' she afterward said, 
"right Into the kindest, most reassuring brown 
eyes In the world," for Sigurd's head was droop- 
ing close above her own and all the help that a 
collie could give beamed In his friendly gaze. 

Hints of age began to appear, reluctant though 
we were to recognize them, In Sigurd himself, — 
an inchnatlon toward longer and longer naps In 
his own disreputable chair, an Increasing resent- 
ment of sweeping days and housecleaning, and a 
tendency, long after a swollen ear or a sharp at- 
tack of eczema was cured and Sigurd, settling his 
chin on his paws, had dismissed Dr. Vet with a 
slow, majestic sweep of tall, to continue to claim 
the lazy privileges of an Invalid. Sometimes his 
stiffening limbs failed to fold themselves with the 
old comfort Into the hollow of his chair, and he 
would look up to us In puzzled appeal. He was 
a handsome collie still, but his manners had grown 
more reserved and his bearing more stately. He 
was no longer excited by Commencement festivi- 
ties, though he would stroll up to take a look at 
the Tree Day dances and saunter Into the Garden 
Party, accepting the embraces of old friends and 
new with an amiability only slightly tinged with 



196 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

boredom. But he loved more and more to bask 
in the sun on the south porch or to dream, his legs 
tied into his favorite bowknot, in front of the 
study fireplace, where Joy-of-Life's annual barrel 
of Christmas driftwood made the flames look like 
little rainbows on a holiday. 

He was almost ten years old when he was run 
over by an automobile. Except for a bruised paw 
he did not seem to be hurt, for he crouched so 
flat in the road that the machine merely scraped 
his back, but his nerves were severely shaken. 
When we came home that noon, he greeted us 
with a prolonged, strange howl, unlike anything 
that we had ever heard from him before, and for 
weeks would not venture out upon the roads with- 
out one of us to serve as bodyguard, wheedling 
until we had to drop our books and devise some 
respectable excuse for a walk. Left behind at a 
Greek Letter Society House one evening, he re- 
fused to start off for home alone — the bold 
ranger of a thousand midnights — and his indul- 
gent girl hostesses telephoned for a carriage, so 
that Sigurd came proudly driving up to his front 
door in a hack. He so enjoyed the extra pet- 
ting that came with any mischance that he affect- 



FAREWELLS 197 

ed, when it occurred to him, this terror long after 
It had faded out, just as he would in running tuck 
up an Injured foot, when he happened to think of 
It, weeks after It was healed, and hop plaintively 
on three legs until the sight of a cat or a squirrel 
made him forget all about It. 

Sigurd had several promising sons in the vil- 
lage, and one of these we would gladly have 
adopted had not our delight In Its puppy graces 
nearly broken his jealous old heart. So we let 
It go to other admirers and presently lost all trace 
of his golden scions. But one dav, when I was 
walking with him, a winsome little lad came up 
and, touching his cap, asked shyly If he might 
stroke Sigurd, "for he's the papa of my dog 
Trusty that died." Poor Trusty was a victim 
of distemper, and the child softly told us all about 
it, his arms about the neck of Sigurd, who put on 
an appropriate expression of bereavement. 

The burden of the years brought Its own com- 
pensation. Instead of the darkling escapades that 
used to distract and worry us, Sigurd became the 
best of company. In the depths of a winter night. 
Joy-of-LIfe was the lark of the household, and I 



igS SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

the owl, so our self-appointed caretaker, after 
seeing her early to bed, would come downstairs 
again to lie close against my feet, inviting con- 
fidences. When I became too absorbed in my 
task to answer his remarks, he would still hold 
forth In a broken conversational grumble, con- 
tented, for reply, with the crackling of the fire 
and the scratching of a pen. 

Nor was Sigurd the only one of our blithe fel- 
lowship for whom Time was quietly setting up 
milestones along the changing road. He was still 
in his prime when, on a date of gleaming memory, 
the Dryad gave at Norumbega Hall a birthday 
party for my mother, a party musical with our 
Poet's own sweet and roguish songs, not only in 
honor of 

"her who graciously 
With each soft year younger grows, 
As the earth with every rose," 

but in merry greeting of each of the other guests. 
The white-crowned mother of Joy-of-Life was 
there, and the mother of the College Reconciler, 

'*Who, over and over 

(The Lady from Dover), 
Turns thistles to clover." 



FAREWELLS 199 

The spirited hostess of Norumbega, a bright- 
eyed little grandmother immensely proud of that 
distinction, sat opposite the presiding Dryad, and 
beside my mother was her Mount Holyoke class- 
mate of the heroic days of Mary Lyon, our gen- 
tle Librarian Emeritus, so modest from her long 
maidenhood that she was distressed at the infant 
art of aviation, fearing that one could no longer 
brush one's hair in a dressing-sacque free from the 
peril of a man swooping down from the clouds to 
peep In at the window. 

It is but a few years since that hour of 

"Laurels and laughter and light," 

yet all those smiling elder faces, and not those 
only, have vanished away. 

Sigurd had his part In that fairest of our fes- 
tivities, for an Impressionistic picture of him 
shines from the stanza that the Dryad addressed 
to Joy-of-LIf e : 

"This lady is always attended 

By a golden and comet-y trail 
Of light, speed, sound, fury all blended. 
This lady is always attended 
By a beautiful vision and splendid, 

A flaunting and triumphing tail. 
This lady is always attended 

By a golden and comet-y trail.** 



200 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

A saucier dinner-card was mine : 

"You see her start out all agog 
For chapel, pursued by her dog. 

You may think her a saint, 

But he thinks she ain't, 
When she sets hira to guarding a frog." 

A dagger affixed to this effusion called atten- 
tion to a learned note : 

"This is a scientific error: the beast should be Bufo Lenti- 
ginosus not Rana catesbiana. Such errors are common in the 
best poetry." 

As successive sorrows cast their shadows on 
our hearts, as the mothers slipped away, as the 
Dryad was smitten down in her brightness, a star 
fallen from midsummer sky, Sigurd proved him- 
self a very comforter. The sympathetic droop of 
his ears and decorum of his disconsolate brown 
eyes in the first hush of mourning and, in the later 
loneliness, his nuzzling head against the knee, 
touches of a pleading tongue on hand and cheek, 
his insistence on an answering smile, a pat, a 
romp, his conviction that, while sun and wind 
made holiday and the wood was full of sticks to 
throw for Sigurd, it was natural to be glad, helped 
us better than more formal consolations. Both 



FAREWELLS 201 

solitude and society, both ignorance and wisdom, 
he could press close to the hurt without intrusion. 
Often when one or the other of us, forgetful of 
the work upon the desk, had let the cloud creep 
over, Sigurd would rouse himself, trot across ta 
the fireplace, select from the basket a piece of 
light kindling wood, and present it with the clear 
intimation that it would be more true to love to 
cheer up Sigurd with a bit of play than to lose 
the hour in grieving. 

Rarely in his joyful life, and then but for a 
matter of days or weeks, had we both been away 
from Sigurd. He hated to have either of us go. 
fie knew only too well the meaning of trunks and 
suitcases and always stalked uneasily about the 
room, getting in the way as much as possible, dur- 
ing the process of packing. When at last he saw 
these objects of ill omen closed and carried down- 
stairs, followed by one of his mistresses in travel- 
ing garb, he would desperately take his stand in 
the doorway and, planting his legs like principles, 
do his best to bar her exit. For a few days he 
would be very restless, watchful, anxious, keeping 
close to the mistress who stayed behind to ques- 
tion her with troubled looks and entreat her not 



202 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

to abandon Sigurd; nor was the missing all on 
his side. The summer of 1908 was so hot that 
our gasping collie would tease his friends to fan 
him and, for the first and only time, we had him 
shaved. His bright hair, duly cleansed, was 
made up with corn-colored silk into a sofa-pillow 
and sent to Joy-of-Life, then sojourning in strange 
places, now among the Mormons, now on an In- 
dian reservation, gathering material for her two 
vivid volumes on the Economic Beginnings of the 
Far West; and she assured him that his "yellow 
bunch of love'' was a magical cure for a certain 
ache beyond the ken of the doctors. But griev- 
ously abashed he was with only the white waves 
of his ruff, his fore-pantalets and plumy tail un- 
profaned by the shears, and his sufferings from 
mortification and mosquitoes outwent all that he 
had endured from the heat. As his silky under- 
vest grew long enough to curl, he reminded us 
of Cagnotte, the supposed poodle bought for 
three-year-old Gautier by his nurse, on whom the 
Paris dealers palmed off a cur sewed up in a 
jacket of lamb's wool. 

On summer vacations our Volsung sometimes 
went up into New Hampshire with one or both 



FAREWELLS 203 

of us. He especially rejoiced in our cottage life 
on Twin Lake, where Sigurd renewed his youth, 
pursuing 

"the swallows o'er the meads 
With scarce a slower flight." 

Here he learned to scratch up his own bed in 
the pine needles and to wash his stick at the edge 
of the lake after a game, though we never quite 
succeeded, on account of his masculine prejudices, 
in teaching him to wash his dinner-plate. There 
were drawbacks, however, about these summer 
travels with Sigurd. His first concern, on arriv- 
ing at a new place, was to go the rounds of the 
neighborhood and knock over all the dogs. Hav- 
ing thus established our popularity, he proceeded 
to make himself at home, welcoming most affably 
the dog-owners who called to complain of his ex- 
ploits. 

One summer he was with Joy-of-LIfe up In 
Franconia, where they loved to climb the scenery, 
Sigurd taking Immense satisfaction In his duties 
as guide. "Find the path, boy," she would bid, 
and very proudly he would run at a little distance 
before her, nosing out the way. It was on one 
of these excursions that he came upon a scattered 



204 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

ilock of sheep and — hey presto! — was instantly 
transformed into a dog that we had never known. 
Uttering a curious "Yep, yep, yep!" unlike any 
sound he had ever been heard to make before, he 
sped away toward those astonished sheep, round- 
ed them up and drove them, much too fast for 
their comfort, to the furthest limit of their sloping 
pasture, where Joy-of-Life found him, panting in 
tremendous excitement, holding the sheep, a 
woolly huddle, penned into an angle of the deep 
stone walls. The next morning he was off before 
daybreak and, after an arduous search, she found 
him again playing stern guardian to that same 
embarrassed flock. If only the Lady of Cedar 
Hill had offered him the lordship of a sheepfold 
instead of a cattle-barn, Sigurd would have been 
Njal to the end of his days. But Joy-of-Life, 
afraid that the ancestral Scotch conscience so sud- 
denly awakened in him might not be to the liking 
of the Franconia farmers, decided on an imme- 
diate return to the Scarab. 

Sigurd always detested train travel, and this 
time he barely escaped a tragedy. The baggage 
car was so full that to him could be allotted only 
a space the size of his body. Into that narrow 



FAREWELLS 205 

cavity he was confined by walls of trunks that 
towered on every side. Within an hour of Bos* 
ton an abrupt jolt threw the passengers forward 
in their seats. Beyond a few bumps and bruises 
no harm was done and Joy-of-Life speedily made 
her way forward through the disordered train, 
which had come to a standstill, to the baggage-car. 
Here she found a scene of disastrous confusion, 
trunks and valises pitched madly about, one bag- 
gageman groaning with a broken arm, on which 
a doctor was already busy, and the other bleeding 
from a cut across his forehead. For very shame 
she could not speak of a collie until, under the 
doctor's directions, she had washed and bound 
up that cut. It was her patient who mentioned 
Sigurd first. 

*'By George, your dog I'' he said. "He's down 
under that tumble of trunks over there. Not a 
yelp from him. I'm afraid he hadn't a chance." 

Brakemen had pushed in, by this time, and 
with ready sympathy undertook to clear a way to 
the corner where Sigurd had been imprisoned. 
A monster crate had fallen in such a way as to 
roof him over and, when this was dragged aside, 
there crouched Sigurd, showing no physical in- 



2o6 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

jury but utterly motionless, staring with blank 
eyes at his rescuers. 

"Back broken," suggested one of the men. 

But Joy-of-Life gave, though from pale lips, 
the glad, out-of-door trill that Sigurd knew so 
well. He quivered and, with one tremendous 
bound, cleared the intervening heap of baggage 
and reached her. She sat on a portmanteau, with 
her arms about him, till they arrived at Boston, 
and then led him down the platform and took him 
with her into a cab. All the time Sigurd was 
strange, remote, moving like a body without a 
spirit, unresponsive to all her attempts at comfort 
and cheer. But during the long wait for her 
missing trunk, Sigurd suddenly brightened up and 
tried to scrabble out of the window into the cab 
drawn up alongside. It was occupied by a plump, 
elderly couple, who gleefully pulled him in, and 
to them Sigurd at once began to tell, in eager 
whines and pitiful whimpers, that hardly needed 
Joy-of-Life's commentary, the story of his peril. 

"Poor fellow! Poor beauty!" they crooned. 
"We know, we know. Our own dear collie was 
killed in just such a mix-up twenty years ago. 
Your collie knew that we would understand." 



FAREWELLS 207 

And Sigurd, restored in soul at last, licked their 
kind old faces and retired to his own cab. By 
the time he reached home, he was so completely 
himself again that he ate a hearty dinner and 
spent the better part of the evening scratching 
up the straw in Sigurd's House to see what treas- 
ures dogs and children might have stored there 
during his absence. 

In the scorching July of 19 13 we both left 
Sigurd for a year. The poor lad was so wretched 
with the heat that we hoped he might be less 
keenly aware than usual of the packing; but he 
knew. I do not like to remember the look in his 
eyes when, that last morning, he was brought up 
from his retreat in the cellar for good-by. I turn 
from that memory to his antics a few evenings 
earlier, when he had been out frisking with some 
dog callers in the comparative cool. He woofed 
imperiously at the screen door and, as soon as 
it was unlatched, dashed it open and came tearing 
into the study to demand of me some service that 
I was slow to comprehend. 

"How dull you are to-night I" he grunted and, 
flouncing down beside me, fell clumsily to work on 
a hind paw. Investigating, I found a long thorn 



2o8 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

run up into the pad. It took me a minute or two 
to grip it and pull it out, while Sigurd, wincing 
a little but with full confidence In my surgery, 
waited as patiently as a boy when a ball game is 
on. When the thorn was drawn, he gave one 
flying lick to his foot and another to my hand — 
"Much obliged, but you might have been quicker 
about It" — and bounded back to his play with 
puppy eagerness. 

We had made all possible arrangements for 
his comfort, boarding him still at his home where 
three of the household remained with the new 
tenants, but he was no longer the Lord of the 
Scarab. We knew that he would do his golden 
best and we hoped that In his own sweet wisdom 
he would realize that love never goes away, but 
as he watched and searched in vain, week after 
week and month after month, Sigurd drooped, 
and grew deaf with listening for voices over sea. 
Old friends took him on the short walks that suf- 
ficed him now and affectionate greetings met him 
everywhere on campus and on street. He would 
often be seen napping on one neighborly porch or 
another, for he dwelt more and more in the dim 
land of "Nod, the shepherd," consorting with 



FAREWELLS 209 

"His blind old sheep-dog, Slumber-soon." 

Housewife Honey-voice gave htm true and ten- 
der care, and when, on a zero night, she had to 
deny him the warmth of the Scarab and put him 
to bed, well tucked up with rugs. In Sigurd's 
House, she would tell him, for the strengthening 
of his spirit, that "even Jesus Christ slept In the 
straw." 

For our own part, we tried not to think too 
much of our forsaken collie, but up In Norway we 
heard dogs called by his name and even on our 
housetop promenades in Seville we were reminded 
of his frolic grace by a scalawag puppy on a 
neighboring flat roof, a gleeful little gymnast 
whose joy it was to leap up and jerk the linen 
off the line. Sigurd's friends and ours wrote to 
us of his welfare with a cheerfulness that was apt 
to waver before the end of the paragraph. 

"I met him on the campus yesterday,'' scribbled 
Nannikachee, "and when I asked him where his 
professors were, he galloped all over the snow, 
remembering you as juncos, and on second thought 
he reared up against an oak and barked up into 
Its branches to scare you out of your holes, con- 



2IO SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

vinced that you had come to a bad end and been 
turned Into squirrels. Such are the workings of 
the mighty mind you two sillies credit him with! 
He looked as round and yellow as a Thanksgiv- 
ing pumpkin, but there was something wistful 
about him, too." 

On the twenty-third of May, within a month 
of our return, Sigurd died. To all his losses 
had been added, that spring, the loss of College 
Hall, through whose familiar corridors he had 
roamed as usual, always seeking, one March af- 
ternoon, and which he found the next morning a 
desolation of blackened walls and blowing ashes. 
If Sigurd could have counted into the hundreds, 
he would have known that every girl was safe, but 
if he could have read in the papers of the quiet 
self-control with which, roused from their sleep 
to find the flames crackling about them, they had 
steadily carried through their fire-drill, formed 
their lines, waited for the word and gone out in 
perfect order, he would have been no prouder of 
them than he always was. Of course his Welles- 
ley girls would behave like that. 

Sigurd crowded with the rest of the college into 
close quarters, where he was morel than ever 



FAREWELLS 211 

underfoot. On that languid twenty-second of 
May he slept all day along the threshold of the 
improvised postofEce, and the hurrying feet 
stepped over him with unreproaching care. But 
with the arrival of the late afternoon mail, the 
postmistress, knowing the rush that was to come, 
said kindly to him: 

"Now, Sigurd, you must really go away." 

He rose slowly and moved from door to door 
till he came to the office of the Christian Associa- 
tion. Assured of Samaritan shelter here, he fin- 
ished his snooze on their one rescued rug, but ar- 
rived at home in punctual time for his dinner, and 
that night it chanced to be the dinner Sigurd liked 
best. Little Esther, who had a romp with him 
on his arrival, said he *'smiled all over when he 
smelt the liver cooking." 

He scraped out his pan to the last crumb and 
then lay down in a favorite burrow of loose, cool 
earth for a twilight revery. One of the house- 
hold, a new lover, invited him to take a stroll with 
her, but he excused himself with a grateful rub 
of his head against her knees. 

He slept in Sigurd's House, as usual, and start- 
ed out soon after dawn, as usual, to go for a 



212 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

splash in a brook not far away. An early riser, 
intent on making up her count of birds, met him 
and reported that he was trotting briskly and 
saluted her with "a sunny twinkle of his tail." 
Across the road from the brook is a pleasant old 
homestead under whose great trees Sigurd often 
took a morning nap before returning to the 
Scarab. Its occupants looked from the window, 
as they were dressing, and saw him lying at ease 
under a spreading evergreen. An hour later, as 
they rose from breakfast, they observed that 
Sigurd had not changed his posture and, going out 
to bid him good morning, found him lifeless. 
There was no injury on his body nor any sign of 
pain or struggle. He had made friends even with 
Death. 

Did he, like the old hero Njal, * 'gentle and gen- 
erous," foreknow his end as he chose out this 
quiet, beautiful spot? "We will go to our bed," 
said Njal in the saga, ''and lay us down. I have 
long been eager for rest." 

A grave was dug for Sigurd on the brow of 
Observatory Hill over which he had so often 
sped in the splendor of his strength, and there, 
under the pines, some score of his closest friends 



FAREWELLS 213 

and ours gathered the following morning. With 
the reading of dog poems and the dropping of 
wild flowers they gave the still body, that was not 
Sigurd, back to earth. Jack pressed close to his 
mistress, whose Wallace sleeps near by, and 
whined as the box was lowered, while little Es- 
ther, beholding for the first time a burial, broke 
into wild crying. 

In the autumn I stood by the grave, on which 
the one dear Sister left in The Orchard had 
planted violets and periwinkles from Laddie's 
mound, and watched a kindly young workman set 
above It a low granite block Inscribed, "Sigurd — 
Our Golden Collie. 1902-19 14." As I strewed 
the stone with goldenrod and turned away, there 
echoed on the air ancient words from the Greek 
Anthology, *'Thou who passest on the path. If 
haply thou dost mark this monument, laugh not, 
I pray thee, though It Is a dog's grave. Tears 
fell for me." 

Sigurd would have been well content with the 
honors that his College paid him, — an obituary 
notice written with tenderest sympathy, a com- 
memorative letter from his Class of 191 1 and 



214 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

many a student elegy. It shall be his own class 
poet who paints the final picture : 

"A dancing collie and gay woodland sprite, 
Philosopher, friend, playmate unto each, 
Quiet in trial and charming in delight. 
Without the doubtful benefit of speech. 

When snow was over earth and lake and sky, 
How often where pale hemlock boughs bent low 

Have we beheld his flying shape go by. 
An arrow sped from an immortal bow!" 



TO JOY-OF-LIFE 

So that was why our collie went away, 
Wise Sigurd, knowing you would come 

Ere a new springtide by the valley gray, 
Planning to guide you home, 

To bark Heaven's earliest welcome, to entice 
Those dearest feet the dim glen through, 

Then proudly up blithe hills of Paradise 
To "find the path" for you. 



II 



OTHER COMRADES OF THE 
ROAD 



THE PINE GROVE PATH 

Our festal day was yet so young, 
As through the pines I carae to you, 
The level sunrise lightly flung 
Before my feet, O eager feet, 
A flickering path of flame to yoiL 

The purple finches, breakfasting 

On pinecone seeds, in charity 

Tossed down the silky scales, to bring 

My human heart, O singing heart, 

A share of their hilarity. 

But gladder than those revelers 
So raspberry red, I sped to you, 
Beyond the pines, beyond the firs, 
A birthday guest, O blissful guest 
To tread the path that led to you. 



ROBIN HOOD 

"The little bird with the red breast, which for his great 
familiarity with men they call a Robin, if he meet any one oa 
the woods to go astray, and to wander he knows not whither 
out of his way, of common charitie will take upon him to 
guide him, at least out of the woods, if he will but follow him, 
as some think. This I am sure of, it is a comfortable and 
sweet companion." 

— Partheneia Sacra. By "H. A." 1533. 

The early history of Robin Hood, like that of 
too many illustrious characters, is veiled in ob- 
scurity. I never knew his parents nor was I ever 
on speaking terms with any other member of his 
family. I cannot tell whether his nursery was set 
in an apple tree or elm or oak or pine, nor whether 
it was wind or boy or other untoward circum- 
stance of nestling life that cast his helpless in- 
fancy adrift upon the world. Our earliest knowl- 
edge of Robin Hood dates from Sunday morning, 
June 16, 1 90 1, when a group of Wellesley chil- 
dren, demurely wending their way to Sunday 
School across a bit of open green, heard chirps in 

the grass and picked up a baby robin, cold, hungry, 

219 



1220 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

bedraggled, pecked and generally forlorn. They 
took him to Sunday School, muffling him in a spick- 
and-span small handkerchief when his cries be- 
came too shrill and, after this vain attempt at 
spiritual comfort, gave him to one of their 
mammas, who, for several days, managed to sus- 
tain him on experimental diets. Thursday morn- 
ing, being about to make her summer exodus, she 
cheerfully transferred her fosterling to me. Her 
farewell attention, a spoonful of milk poured 
down his yawning throat, nearly ended his ad- 
ventures on the spot. He turned up his eyes, 
gasped and stiffened, but with admirable presence 
of mind she balanced him on his bill, gave him a 
dexterous tap in the crop and wiped up the milk 
from the table, while Robin, blinking ruefully, 
resigned himself to a nap in my pocket. He woke 
before we reached home, however, and demanded 
luncheon so imperiously that I called at the near- 
est house and begged for bread. At the drug 
store I paused again for water and, to make bet- 
ter connection between this fluid and the depths 
of that bright orange cavity which Robin so con- 
fidingly opened, I bought a medicine-dropper, but 
soon found that a finger-tip would do as well. 



ROBIN HOOD 231 

Owing to these attentions by the way, Robin 
Hood was In an agreeable and sociable frame of 
mind when he first met his adopted family, yet 
all his baby graces gained for him only a mocking 
reception. He was such a dumpy, speckle- 
breasted fluff, with funny folding legs that could 
not hold him up on the perch, no tall and an 
utterly disproportionate amount of bill, that it 
was Impossible to take him seriously, but his 
trustful little heart never once suspected that we 
were making fun of him. He cuddled down cosily 
on an Improvised couch In the corner of a canary 
cage and devoted himself to a steady alternation 
of snoozes and gorges. Everybody laughed at him 
— ^the Dryad, who declared him a little monster 
of greediness and bad manners; the chipmunks, 
who peered curiously Into his cage whenever we 
left it for sun and air on the piazza; even Joy-of- 
Llfe, who promptly sallied out with a long Iron 
spoon to dig him worms. For Robin Hood would 
keep on ringing his dinner-bell, so to speak, even 
while the moistened bits of bread were being 
thrust down his vociferous throat, ceasing from 
that hungry clamor only when he was stuffeei to 
the point of suffocation. Then, with a ridiculous 



222 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

little grunt, he would topple off the supporting 
hand back to his trundle-bed and doze like a dor- 
mouse only to awake, in half an hour or so, an 
utterly famished birdling, all one yellow gape of 
tremulous eagerness and outcry. 

At this stage of development, living to eat, and 
eating to sleep, Robin was left for several days in 
the care of Dame Gentle, kindest of neighbors, 
pending the absence of his foster family. Here 
he was petted to his babyhood's content and soon 
evinced a docile, affectionate disposition. He 
took a dislike to his cramped canary cage, but now 
he was strong enough to perch, and once placed 
on a chair rung by a hand he trusted, he would 
sit quiet from one feeding time to the next, or 
until he heard a familiar voice or step. Then, 
floppity-flop, down to the floor would tumble 
Robin and hop joyously to meet his friend. He 
soon had a soft, crooning little note for Dame 
Gentle, and all the summer long, while he became 
a general chatterbox, kept a peculiarly confiden- 
tial accent and manner for her. 

We resumed our charge on the third of July, 
but on the Fourth our attention was somewhat di- 
verted from Robin by the gift of a baby vireo, 



ROBIN HOOD 223 

apparently wounded by a fall from the nest. This 
green jewel, wild as a windy leaf at first, was 
soon tamed, but his diet proved a difficult prob- 
lem. Robin Hood was only too ready to eat 
anything and everything, but the tiny vireo, though 
calling piteously for food, turned his bill away in 
sore disappointment from our various offerings. 
He would not touch the crumbs of softened bread, 
nor Robin^s favorite mess of mashed potato and 
hard-boiled egg-yolk. We consulted all our bird- 
books, and when we learned that the case de- 
manded ''masticated insects," we sat down and 
looked at each other in despair. I generously 
offered to catch any number of insects, if Joy-of- 
Life would do the masticating, but little Liberty 
Bell finally compromised on a masticated rasp- 
berry. The next day, mocking-bird food was 
procured for him, and this he swallowed with ap- 
parent relish, but still he did not thrive. 

On Sunday, the seventh, an eager troop of chil- 
dren brought to our door another fallen vlreo, 
this wee waif seeming in worse state than the 
other. We named him Church Bell and cherished 
him as tenderly as our ignorance might, but I 
hope Cornelia never had half the trouble with 



224 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

her jewels that our pair of emeralds gave us. 
Their sharp, incessant, querulous pipe, the utter- 
ance of pains we could not soothe, was so trying 
to the nerves that, when I heard Joy-of-Life drop- 
ping books, I would transfer the nest from her 
desk to mine, and when Mary came up with a 
message from the grocer to find me spilling ink, 
she would take the vireos down to her ironing 
board and drown their plaints by her lusty voice 
of song. They were exquisite little creatures to 
see, and as trustful with us as was Robin himself, 
but we never had the key to their mystery. They 
would cry even in sleep and had hours of violent 
trembling. We would sometimes put them in the 
rough, outdoor cage which had been built for 
Robin, a large, square, unfloored box with roof 
and walls of woven wire. He looked big and lub- 
berly beside them, like Puck beside Oberon and 
Titania, but he was always good-natured with his 
dainty guests and often tried to join in the con- 
versation as they sat, pressed close together, on 
the far end of the twig which served him for a 
perch, lamenting like elfin Banshees. A touch of 
chilly weather ended their brief tragedy. Liberty 
Bell was hushed forever in the dawn of Tuesday, 



ROBIN HOOD 225 

the ninth, and by Wednesday noon Church Bell 
lay silent beside him in the rockery which was al- 
ready the burial cairn of three beloved chickens, 
Microbe, Pat and Cluxley. 

Meanwhile Robin Hood had been causing his 
share of anxiety. The birdlings were all so tame 
that, in feeding them, we used to throw back that 
half of the cage-top which served as lid, where- 
upon they would fly up to the edge of the box and 
sit there in a row for dinner. Occasionally one 
of the vireos would flash up into a low tree and 
wail for food until we had to bring the step-ladder 
and fetch him down. But it was not until Robin's 
winglets were fairly grown that he seemed aware 
of the existence of trees. Then, suddenly, one 
azure afternoon, he glanced up, cocked his head, 
spread his untried Icarus-plumes and was off. In 
instant consternation, the whole family trooped 
after him, so far as groundlings could, while he 
flew from tree to tree and roof to roof. Chirping 
in his affectionate fashion, he peeped down upon 
us with evident surprise as if to ask, *'Why don't 
you come, too? It's much nicer up here." Inno- 
cent of mirrors, he probably thought that we 
looked just like him, or that he looked just like 



226 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

us, and he could not understand why we chose to 
be earth-gropers when the leafy branches swayed 
so delectably in mid-air. But he was such a social 
and kindly little bird that, on our repeated calls, 
he came dipping down to us and, without protest 
of a feather, let himself be shut into his cage 
again. 

Now we were face to face with the question 
that had already cast its shadow before. Should 
we make a life-long captive of our Robin, who 
took so pleasantly to human ways, or should we 
give him the perils and delights of liberty? 
Mary's eyes were very wistful, and Joy-of-Life 
and I reiterated to each other that our house- 
reared bird would be handicapped in the green- 
wood struggle for life, that he was necessarily 
weaker and less wary than other young robins, 
that there were white kittens next door, that a 
gaunt, gray hunting-cat had been seen lurking 
about the wire box — and yet, all the while, we 
knew what we must do. 

"He who bends to himself a joy 
Does the winged life destroy; 
But he who kisses the joy as it flies 
Lives in eternity's sunrise." 



ROBIN HOOD 227 

And so, on the following day, whenever any of 
us were at leisure to guard our artless adventurer 
from the dangers of the yard, we set the cage-lid 
wide and let him go where he would. He made 
small use of his privileges at first. Little runs on 
the lawn amused him for a while, but he would 
soon mount to the piazza rail and tease the occu- 
pant of the steamer chair for food and petting. 
His hops over the shelving rock behind the house 
were feeble; his trips of exploration to the neigh- 
boring trees and roofs were brief. He was hardly 
more than a baby robin yet and, soon wearied, he 
would go back into his cage for a nap on the 
familiar perch. An old maternal robin showed 
much interest in this lonely, weak-legged young- 
ster, who seemed so unthrifty about picking up 
ants for himself, but he squealed with fright and 
flew to us whenever she approached him. She 
would stand silently beside the cage and study 
him through the wire while he slept, but whether 
she was the matron of a robin-home for crippled 
children, or one of his kinsfolk puzzling out a 
likeness, our bewildered fosterling, whose Idea of 
mother-birds was formed on Dame Gentle and 



228 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

ourselves, would have, from first to last, nothing 
to do with her. 

But one evening, July 7th, just as we had fin- 
ished giving Robin Hood a particularly good sup- 
per on the edge of his box, he suddenly soared 
and left us. The house stands 

"About a young bird's flutter from a wood," 

and, to our dismay, Robin Hood made thither- 
ward as if it were Sherwood Forest, disappeared 
among the dusky treetops and returned not a 
chirp to all our agitated calling. He had not 
passed a night out of doors for the three weeks 
that he had been under human guardianship, and 
we felt that anything from a fatal chill to a fatal 
hawk might befall him. But the first sound that 
greeted my waking senses In the morning was 
Mary's delighted, rich-toned, "Why, Robby!" 
and there, on top of his cage, sat a hungry, happy 
little bird, chirping eagerly and gesticulating with 
one wing in a funny fashion of his own, peculiar 
to seasons of excitement. 

Mary — be it said in passing— v/as Cecilia's pre- 
decessor and for several years, at the outset of 
our housekeeping, gave us a devotion only sur- 



ROBIN HOOD 229 

passed by her devotion to her own large and lively 
family. They lived but a few miles away, in the 
Boston suburb known as Jamaica Plain, and Mary 
was subject to violent attacks of homesickness, 
especially at Christmas, Easter, Hallowe'en and 
Thanksgiving, so that we were usually deprived 
of her services when we needed them most. Once 
at home, she would feast and frolic until she had 
made herself just sick enough to have a pathetic 
pretext for prolonging her absence day after day. 
When she turned up at last, her Irish wit would 
Inevitably forestall and frustrate any little un- 
pleasantness that might be awaiting her. I had 
mentioned at table one evening, while Mary was 
changing the courses, that, lunching with our col- 
lege president that day, I had enjoyed luscious 
grapefruit fresh from the West Indies, "brought 
her by a private hand from Jamaica." From her 
next truancy Mary returned with a bulging paper 
bag in her arms, which, even while my lips were 
parting to utter a deeply meditated reproach, she 
dumped upon me with her rosy cheeks aglow and 
her round blue eyes all twinkles. "Here's grape- 
fruit for yez, brought by a private hand from 
Jamaica — Plain." The family, waiting about 



230 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

gleefully to hear me deliver that purposed scold- 
ing, broke into a shout of laughter, and the 
honors of the day rested, as always, with the 
culprit. 

During one of these vacations, intolerably pro- 
longed by excuse after excuse, our patience gave 
way and we availed ourselves of a sudden chance 
to put in her place, as temporar}^ substitute, a 
highly competent (and expensive) Scandinavian 
woman. Thus we entered upon a month of un- 
paralleled luxury, for Gunilla proved to be a cook 
of the first order. We were quite below her 
standard of household opulence and elegance, as 
we realized when she asked us, with her invari- 
able bearing of respectful dignity, if we would 
kindly tell her where our wine cellar was located, 
but she was disposed to take a rest between great 
houses and provided for our simple needs with 
indulgent efficiency as long as her whim lasted. 
Although she had broiled and roasted for a gov- 
ernor, a bishop, and various magnates of indus- 
try, she turned to scrubbing for recreation as 
naturally as czars and kaisers turn to chopping 
wood. She beat every particle of dust, after 
sweeping, out of broom and whisk, and before 



ROBIN HOOD 231 

hanging out the clothes, she scoured the line and 
every astonished clothespin. The sheets and 
other flat pieces sent home from the laundry she 
straightway plunged Into her own tubs. Her 
pantry shone with obtrusive cleanliness and every 
dish came glistening to the stiff, high-lustered 
table-cloth, where her spiced breadstlcks were 
cradled In fresh napkins for each dinner. Her 
kitchen range fairly dazzled the eye with Its sable 
brightness, and we were so proud of the tooth- 
some concoctions that came crackling and crinkling 
from It as to give, under her smiling encourage- 
ment, a ruinous series of banquets to our campus 
friends. 

Promptly on Gunllla's departure, Mary came 
charging back to us, fired with jealous wrath. 
Indeed, she would talk of little else but the enor- 
mities of extravagance committed by "The 
Gorilla," until Robin Hood's advent effected a 
welcome diversion. 

For the week following his first venture Into 
the trees Robin grew braver and stronger every 
day. He had no feathered acquaintance and kept 
close at home, hopping about under the rose- 
bushes with a comical air of proprietorship, bath- 



232 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

ing in an old flower-pot saucer in his open cage 
and sitting sociably, for hours at a time, on Joy- 
of-LIfe's window ledge or Mary's, or on my 
window box for winter birds. He could feed 
himself by this time, but he still liked better to be 
fed. His table manners showed marked Improve- 
ment from his "little monster'* age. He no longer 
guzzled, and was becoming quite capable of pick- 
ing up his own living. Sometimes, when the ants 
were abundant, he would try the experiment of 
self-support for half an afternoon. He was still 
a very guileless birdling, and would fall sound 
asleep squatted down on any sunny shelf of rock 
or even in the middle of a path, regardless of the 
prowling tabbies that had already made way with 
our stonewall colony of chipmunks. We encour- 
aged him to frequent his safer haunts on roof and 
window box by keeping fresh water and plentiful 
supplies of mocking bird food ready for him 
there, but we had to know where he was from 
dawn to dark, although the July dawns seemed to 
come In the middle of the night. Morning after 
morning, not daring to trust our innocent even 
with the early worm, I would slip on dressing- 
gown and slippers and be out seeking him by 



ROBIN HOOD 233 

three or four. And there, hopping across the 
already heated concrete, would come skurrying an 
enthusiastic little speckle-breast, flapping one wing 
in salutation and twittering indignantly, "Morn- 
ing I Breakfast I Morning! Breakfast!'* as if he 
had been up reading the newspaper for hours. 
He would ride trustfully on my hand into the 
house, take his food and drink, and then con- 
tentedly go to sleep again, perched, by prefer- 
ence, on top of a door. 

But one Saturday morning I called Robin Hood 
in vain. The air, ringing with bird-carols, held 
no music so precious as his hungry chirp. Joy-of- 
Life was now a thousand miles away, but Mary 
and Dame Gentle joined anxiously In the search. 
We were a distracted household when, at eight, 
a ruddy young Audubon from the hilltop arrived, 
bringing In one hand our overjoyed little truant, 
and in the other another fledgling robin, with the 
merest beginnings of a tail — a waif picked up by 
the roadside. Audubon reported that, as he was 
busy in his garden, a young robin had flown down 
and alighted at his feet, fluttered there a moment 
and raised the nestling cry for food. Happy 
Robin Hood, to have chosen from all the boys of 



234 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

Wellesley the one wisest in benignant woodcraft ! 
Audubon slipped quietly to the ground, caught a 
caterpillar and held it out to Robin, who came 
fearlessly to his hand and choked the furry deli- 
cacy down. Then Audubon was sure that this 
was our famed fosterling and, taking up the un- 
suspicious little fellow, hastened to bring him 
down the hill to his home. 

The new arrival from the greenwood, whom 
we dubbed Friar Tuck, promptly belied that 
jovial memory. He was a wild, sullen, desperate 
little outlaw, whose chirp was a metallic click and 
whose bill had to be pried open before he would 
eat. Not even Robin Hood's hospitable chatter 
could dispel his scared, defiant misery, and on the 
second morning, unable to bear the look he turned 
up to the trees, we lifted the cage lid and let him 
fly. We never, to our knowledge, saw Friar Tuck 
again, and although we often listened for his un- 
canny chirp, it was not heard — not even by Mary, 
whose imagination so expanded under these Nat- 
ural History studies that she would rush upstairs 
several times a day to report all manner of rain- 
bow-colored fowl that she had discovered in the 
thickets. By the following winter, her Celtic 



ROBIN HOOD 235 

vision had soared beyond all bounds. "The 
cherubs are shoveling snow off the porch of Para- 
dise this morning," I once happened to remark, 
whereat Mary, plumping down the hot coffee-pot 
helter-skelter, sprang open-eyed and open- 
mouthed to the window, gazing ecstatically up 
into the white whirl of the storm. "I see thim! 
I see thim ! The shining little dears ! It's using 
their wings for shovels they are, and I see one of 
their feathers afloating down in the snow." 

As the summer went on, Robin Hood became 
the pet of the neighborhood. Even Giant Bluff, 
who had moods of declaring that *Svhat with 
*Biddy-Biddy* on one side, and *Robby-Robby' on 
the other, this hill ain't fit for nothin' but fe- 
males to live on," would bring tidbits to our 
Speckle, who soon saved him the trouble by mak- 
ing frequent calls at the front door. A guest of 
that house used to come to her window in the 
early morning and sing him "Robin Adair," while 
he stood on the opposite roof attentively listen- 
ing, his head cocked and his bright eye turned on 
the serenader. 

But he was a loyal little soul. He spent much 
of his time on Dame Gentle's piazza, and al- 



236 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

though Joy-of-Life, just before her departure, 
treating him for asthma — due, the sages said, to 
an overhearty diet in his inactive babyhood — had 
popped an unhappy worm dipped in red pepper 
down his throat, yet even this Robin could for- 
give. It had hurt his feelings at the time. He 
had withdrawn to his best-beloved branch on his 
best-beloved oak and maintained an offended 
silence for half an hour, but with the sting his 
anger went, and for days after Joy-of-Life's dis- 
appearance, Robin would fly up to her window 
ledge and chirp to the closed blinds. 

During this second week of freedom, his ex- 
perience was enlarged by a thunderstorm, which 
he contemplated with lively astonishment from 
within my window, but the next morning worms 
were plentiful, and there, to Giant Bluff's inordi- 
nate pride, was Robin trotting about the lawn like 
an old hand, turning up bits of turf with a grubby 
little bill and actually getting his own breakfast. 

A day or two later our fledgling began to sow 
wild oats. Thursday afternoon Mary missed him 
and, hunting for him beyond the cairn, which she 
designated *The Pets' Cemetery,'* found him 
lending charmed attention to a big, red-breasted 



ROBIN HOOD 237 

robin, who dashed off so guiltily that he bumped 
himself against the fence. All Friday our Speckle 
was shy and wild, flying about the edge of the 
wood with this first friend of his own feather, but 
he came to perch on the piazza rail at twilight, 
as usual, keeping us company while we took our 
open-air dinner, and responding to our blandish- 
ments with a drowsy chirp. When he soared to 
choose his slumber-spray in one of the tall trees 
before the house, we strained our eyes to follow 
him Into the shadows and called up laughing coun- 
sels and good-nights as long as he would answer. 
But the next morning an evil-eyed black cat sat 
on our steps and, hour after hour, no Robin Hood 
appeared. Mary spent most of the forenoon in 
the woods and, after luncheon, we both went call- 
ing through a leafy world with a Babel of chirps 
about us. *'Thim birds, they're just a-mocking 
me," walled Mary. But suddenly we both heard, 
hurrying along the air, that dear, unmistakable 
baby squawk, and in an instant more our own 
little Speckle came plumping down on my head, 
where he rode triumphantly into the house, flap- 
ping his funny right wing all the way and gasp- 
ing with speed and excitement. He had perhaps 



238 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

been in a fight, for one side of his guileless face 
was badly pecked. Throughout the afternoon he 
devoured one full meal after another, allowing 
ten-minute siesta intervals, with all the enthusiasm 
of a prodigal son, and then he must have a bath, 
and then he must be held and petted, and all the 
while — ^yep, yep, yep! flop, flop, flop! — he was 
trying to tell the story of his terrible ad-ventures. 
Whatever they were, he was a reformed little 
robin, and spent the Sunday partly on my window 
box, where he would play for fifteen minutes to- 
gether with the nutshells that the chickadees had 
emptied, and partly under a leafy canopy in the 
oak within easy squirrel-leap beyond, not having 
a chirp to chirp to any bad bird who would lead 
him into mischief. 

For a fortnight longer Robin was our daily joy. 
It seemed to make us intimates of the woods to 
hear, as we were walking there, the hail of a 
familiar voice from overhead and look up to see 
our own small Speckle peeping down at us from 
some breezy twig against the blue. For he soon 
recovered from his penitence and went sailing 
through the trees on ever longer voyages of dis- 
covery, being often out of call for two or three 



ROBIN HOOD 239 

hours at a time. But he was always on the win- 
dow box, where no other robin ever came, in the 
early morning from half-past three on to seven, 
overflowing with conversation and insisting on 
intelligent replies to his remarks. At intervals 
throughout the day, too, I would hear a soft thud 
on the box, followed by a chlrp-p-p and the flap-p-p 
of a very impatient and business-like little wing. 
On these occasions Robin Hood was quite too 
much occupied with his greenwood affairs to feed 
himself, and I must needs drop book or pen and 
cram refreshment down his importunate yellow 
gullet till it could hold no more. Then he would 
hop across to his Japanese water-cup, take a dozen 
eager dips, wipe his bill first on one side, then the 
other, on the edge of the box, and then, flapping 
his wing for good-by, sweep off again. In the 
middle of every forenoon and, during the hottest 
weather, of the afternoon as well, he alighted on 
his cage and called imperiously to Mary to bring 
him fresh water for his bath. We shut him In 
during this and during his sun-baths, since he en- 
joyed these rites so much as to be even more than 
commonly oblivious of cats. 

On the evening of July 24 the mercury 



240 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

^'dropped on us," as Mary said, some thirty de- 
grees, and a drenching rain fell all night — a new 
experience for Robin Hood, who appeared at my 
window Thursday morning, a draggled little vaga- 
bond. Had there been no wise robin at hand to 
teach him how to take the oil from his back 
pockets and convert his airy fluff Into a tight- 
fitting waterproof? He was glad to come in out 
of the wet and spent the forenoon in Mary's 
kitchen, letting her fondle him as she would, but 
flying with alarm from the proffered caresses of 
market-man and grocer-boy. In the course of the 
next few days, however, he began to protest a 
little when even his old friends stooped to take 
him up. He would hop backward, snapping his 
blll^ but he seldom flew and, if the hand did not 
remain closed upon him, but left him perching 
free on wrist or finger, he was entirely content. 

On August 8 we did our Robin wrong. An 
expected dinner guest had expressed a desire to 
see him and, as by this time he was spending his 
nights, presumably, In a far-off Robin roost, for 
which he sometimes started early In the afternoon, 
Mary caught him during the absorbed ecstasy of 
his sun-bath and shut him into the cage. This 



ROBIN HOOD 241 

was still a favorite resort of his, and he did not 
object in the slightest until a young robin play- 
mate with whom he was in the habit of flying to 
the roost whistled for him from a scarlet oak. 
Then Robin chirped to us to let him out, growing 
frantic with excitement as we, hitherto so prompt 
to obey his behests, made no move for his release. 
He called and called again, beating about the 
cage and even breaking into a song of wild en- 
treaty. Shame-faced and conscience-stricken, we 
yet put him off, expecting our guest minute by 
minute. It was nearly seven when regrets were 
telephoned, but by that time Robin was in a panic 
and smote our hearts by the terror with which he 
fluttered back from us as we bent over the cage. 

The instant the lid was raised he whirred up 
to the scarlet oak, where his faithful chum still 
waited, but before their belated departure Robin 
flew down to Dame Gentle^s window and told her 
all about it, and then over to Giant Bluff's piazza, 
where he rehearsed his grievances again in a 
scolding chirp never heard from him before. 

We closed the house on the fourteenth and 
went away, unforgiven by Robin Hood, who has 
never, so far as I know, come to human hand 



242 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

since Mary's clasp betrayed him to captivity. 
During those six days we caught flying glimpses 
of our estranged fosterling, easily recognized 
from a distance by the two white feathers in his 
tail, and a few times he started, by sheer force of 
habit, to hop across the road to us from Dame 
Gentle's, but, half-way over, he would turn 
sharply about, give an angry little yep, and hop 
back again. 

When we reopened the house in late Septem- 
ber, not even Dame Gentle had recent news of 
Robin Hood, and all the winter long we carried a 
sorrowful sense of broken friendship. We were 
anxious about our hand-reared birdling, too, 
hardly daring to hope that he could survive the 
perils of migration. What a desperate adventure 
it seemed! 

''Who hath talked to the shy bird-people, 
And counseled the feathered breast 
To follow the sagging rain-wind 
Over the purple crest?" 

But on the sixth day of March Robin Hood 
came home. There had been a baby blizzard the 
night before and, as we returned from college in 



ROBIN HOOD 243 

the early afternoon, I noticed birdtracks in the 
light snow that still mantled the piazza rail. 

"See those prints, right where Robin Hood 
used to sit and watch us take our supper!'' I ex- 
claimed, a wild hope knocking at my heart, but 
Joy-of-Life thought it a case of hungry tree spar- 
rows and, with her especial tenderness for the 
plucky, one-legged fox sparrow that had coijsi|l'ted 
with them all winter, went in to find them a choice 
handful of scraps. But when, a few minutes 
later, I entered my chamJber, there outside his ac- 
customed window, on th6 feeding-box now drifted 
over with snow, sat a great, plump, glossy red- 
breast, staring into the room with Robin's own 
bright eyes and cocking his head to listen to our 
welcome. He fluttered back to the nearest tree, 
when we opened the window, indicating that he 
had learned a thing or two, in the gossip of the 
long aerial journeys, about the human race, nor 
did he ever again enter the house nor let us touch 
him, but he kept close by, for weeks, perching in 
his old familiar places on roof and rail and win- 
dow-ledge, hopping In our walks, arfd gamboling 
in our eyes. Out in the open^^e , would come 
within a few inches of us and there fake his stand 



244 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

and chirp the confidences that we would have 
given all our dictionaries to comprehend. He 
was such a tall, stately robin, with such an im- 
posing air of travel and experience as he stood 
erect, swelling his bright breast with the effort to 
relate his Winter's Tale, that Joy-of-Life re- 
christened him Lord Bobs. 

In course of time our gallant fledgling appeared 
in company with a mate, most disappointing to 
our romantic anticipation, — a faded crosspatch 
old enough to be his grandmother, a very shrew 
who scolded him outrageously whenever she saw 
him lingering beside us. She told him we were 
ogres, alligators, everything that was horrible and 
dangerous, and threatened to peck out his last 
pin-feather unless he flew away from us at once. 
A selfish old body she was, too, monopolizing the 
rock-bath, as if she were taking a cure for rheu- 
matism, whole hours at a time, while Robin Hood, 
hot and dusty, waited on her pleasure in the droop- 
ing branches above. But despite her shrill re- 
monstrances, he would still visit the window box, 
perching on Downy Woodpecker's marrow-bone 
for an opera stage and trilling his matins and 
vespers to our delighted ears. We were as proud 



ROBIN HOOD 245 

of Robin Hood's singing as if we had taught him 
ourselves. Between his carols our troubadour 
would take a little refreshment, trying in turn 
Nuthatch's lump of suet, Bluejay's rinds of cheese, 
Junco's crumbs and his own mocking-bird food, 
or quaffing rain water from Chickadee's nutshell 
cups. He would sometimes hop to the sill and, 
close against the glass, watch all the doings in 
that world which lay about him in his infancy. 
We looked forward to an hour when he might 
bring his own little speckles to play, as he had 
loved to play, with the empty nutshells, but Mrs. 
Robin hustled him off to the woods for the nest- 
ing season and we were never able after that first 
spring to distinguish him with certainty among 
our robin callers. None the less he had made the 
summer and all summers happier for us by his 
gracious though guarded pardon for our unkind- 
ness. 

"Truth never fails her servant, sir, nor leaves him 
With the day's shame upon him," 

and even over wild-bird tradition and matrimonial 
tyranny the truth of our love for Robin Hood, its 
single lapse forgiven, had prevailed. 



WHY THE SPIRE FELL 

Our Emperor built a marble church 
So holy never a bird might perch 
On cross or crocket or gilded crown, 
A fretted minster of far renown, 
But still the spire came crashing down. 

They stoned the sivalloiv and limed the lark; 
A rosy throat vjas an easy mark; 
The tiniest nvren that built her nest 
In Christ's oiun halo, on Mary's breast, 
Was scared anvay like a demon guest. 

Once, twice, thrice, the glistening spire 

That soared from the central tower, higher 

Than all its clustered pinnacles, fell. 

And not one of the carven saints could tell 

The cause, though the emperor quizzed them well. 

Down in the cloister all strewn with chips 

Of alabaster and ivory tips 

Of pastoral staffs and angel wings. 

In a rainbow ruin of sacred things 

He held high court in the way of kings. || 

All the while in a royal rage 

He pelted ivith fragments of foliage, 

Curly acanthus and <vineleaf scroll, 

Finial, dogtooth and aureole, 

The linnets and finches <who came to condole. 



Crowned with a cobwebby cardinal's hat 
That swooped from the vaulted roof like a bat, 
On a tilted porphyry plinth for a throne, 
The emperor summoned in thunder tone 
The hallowed folk of metal and stone. 

Martyrs, apostles, one and all. 
Tiptoed down from the quaking wall; 
Crusaders, uncrossing their legs of brass, 
Sprang from their tombs; over crackle of glass 
Balaam rode on a headless ass. 

But not one of the sculptured cavalcade 
Flocking from choir and creamy fagade, 
Deep-arched portal and pillared aisle 
Had a word on his lips, though all the while 
Gentle St Francis was seen to smile. 

Whistles, chuckles, luarbles tried 
To give the answer the saints denied; 
Gurgles, tinkles, t<witters, trills, 
Carols tvild as v^ayivard rills 
Troubadouring daffodils, 

St. Peter, high in his canopied niche 
Set with jewels exceeding rich, 
Was dancing a hornpipe over the clock, 
But before the gargoyles had time to mock 
From his shoulder crowed St. Peter's cock. 

"Kirikireef Creative Love 
That folds the emperor folds the dove. 
No church is finished, though grand it be. 
That lacks the beauty of charity. 
Buttress your spire. Kirikireef* 

So our Emperor reared the spire anew, 
Yon shaft of glory that cleaves the blue, 
Held in its place by the lightest things 
God ever fashioned, the wee, soft wings 
Of the birds that join io our worshipingi. 



AN EASTER CHICK 

"Only, what I feel is, that no charity at all can get rid of 
a certain natural unkindness which I find in things them- 
selves." 

— ^Pater's Marius the Epicurean, 

The grippe had held me a prostrate prisoner 
for weeks. Books, pencils, people were forbidden. 
It was a strange but not unhappy Lent to lie help- 
less day after day, gazing through my blessed 
square of window into a first snowy, then blowy, 
often rainy and rarely sunshiny patch of wood- 
land, watching the brown oak leaves whirl in 
hurricane dances above the pine-tops, and the 
crows wing their strong flight against the gray of 
the sky. As a cumberer of the earth, I was 
meekly grateful for the least attention from this 
active outdoor world, for the cheery pipings of 
the chickadees, whose wee black bills pounded the 
marrow-bone on the window-sill, for the guttural 
greetings of the white-breasted nuthatches who 
played the acrobat on the swinging, open-work 

bag of cracked walnuts outside the pane, even for 

248 



AN EASTER CHICK 249 

the jeers of the blue jays who swooped to the sash 
and dashed off like triumphant Dick Turpins with 
our bounty of bread and cheese. 

So Joy-of-Life, hearing of a Boston confec- 
tioner's pious offer to bestow an Easter chicken 
on every customer who should alleviate the fast 
by the purchase of two pounds of expensive can- 
dies at any time during Holy Week, thought she 
would add to my feathered acquaintance a more 
intimate companion. Herself an abominator of 
sweets, she heroically passed a dollar and a half 
across the counter and received in exchange, be- 
side two boxes of riotous living, a tiny chick, only 
a day or so out from egg and incubator. 

It was pretty, she said, to see the interest with 
which the tired shop-girls bent over that fluffy 
morsel of life, petting it with light touches and 
soothing words, as it was tucked away, with Indian 
meal for provender and a wad of cottol-wool for 
bedding, in a gay pasteboard houselet. The color 
of this miniature mansion was russet flecked with 
black. The door was a painted sham, but the 
red-tiled roof swung open. The window boasted 
four oblong apertures, and the whole establish- 
ment was symmetrically set in a half-inch estate of 



250 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

the reddest pasteboard clay. The girl made the 
roof secure with a few turns of silver cord and 
the captive was reduced to thrusting an Indignant 
yellow bill through one after another of his win- 
dow openings, expostulating with all creation in a 
series of shrill chirps. As the customer stepped 
out with her premium In hand, the candy-coveting 
group of ragamuffins outside the window surged 
forward in rapture at sight and sound of the 
chicken, and one particularly grimy urchin 
reached up both arms toward It with such an Im-« 
ploring gesture that the birdling almost changed 
ownership then and there. But Joy-of-LIfe be- 
thought herself in time of the conditions of tene- 
ment and alley, not favorable to the development 
of any sort of biped, and said: 

"It is for a sick lady. Don^t you want her to 
have it?" 

And the tatterdemalion slowly dropped his 
wistful hands, sighing dutifully, "Yes, m'm.'* 

The chicken-bearer's dignified progress, "cheep, 
cheep, cheep," across the Common and Public 
Gardens and through the Back Bay section, af- 
forded her a new gauge for testing human nature. 
Colonial Dames who looked an aristocratic re- 



AN EASTER CHICK 251 

buke she put lower In the scale of sympathy than 
the Italian organ-grinder whose black eyes 
laughed frankly Into hers, while the maid who 
opened a door In Newbury street, where Joy-of- 
Llfe had a call to make, fell with her shocked, 
contemptuous stare quite under passing rank. 

It was late In the evening before I heard upon 
the stairs a welcome tread, mounting to that queer 
accompaniment of cheep, cheep, cheep, now 
pitched upon a key, had we but ears to hear, of 
acute distress. My delight In greeting the chicken 
was not reciprocated, and no wonder. Our un- 
conscious. Ignorant crimes against his frail little 
being had already begun. Joy-of-LIfe, ever most 
tender toward the weak, enjoyed, moreover, the 
advantage of having been reared upon a farm, 
where she had often watched the life of coop and 
poultry-yard, but not even she was wise enough 
to give that chicken comfort. 

She had carefully seen to It, all the journey 
through, that he had oxygen enough. The March 
wind blew so harshly that she had wanted to 
shelter the fairy chalet under her cloak, but had 
feared that the yellow bill, forever thrusting it-, 
self through the small casement, would gasp for 



252 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

air. Air! That is the least of a chicken's wants. 
With all his baby energy, Microbe, as we 
promptly christened him, had called for heat, 
heat, heat, and had not been understood. Those 
thin pasteboard walls and that shred of cotton- 
wool had left him practically naked to the blast, 
and he was chilled — poor innocent — ^to the bone. 

And still, in our big, human obtuseness, we did 
not comprehend. We brought him meal mixed 
with cold water — an atrocious diet from which he 
angrily turned away. All at cross purposes, we 
flattered him foolishly in our alien tongue, while 
he remonstrated passionately in his. At last the 
warmth of the room and very weariness quieted 
that incorrigible cheep a little, and he was put 
downstairs out of invalid hearing, with a strip of 
batting cast, like a snowdrift, over his jaunty 
dwelling. 

The family went snugly to bed, while the fur- 
nace fire burned lower and lower and the chill of 
the small hours stole through the house. A less 
mettlesome chicken, overwhelmed with the lone- 
liness and cruel cold, would have yielded up its 
accusing little ghost then and there, but this mite 



AN EASTER CHICK 253 

had a marvelous spirit of his own and struggled 
against fate like a De Wet. 

In that heavy hour before the dawn, Joy-of- 
Life was roused from sleep by such desperate 
chicken shrieks, "Yep, yep, yep I Help, help, 
help I" that no doors could shut them out. Shiv- 
ering in her dressing-gown she went down to our 
unhappy fosterling, who lay stiff and straight, 
with head thrust forward and legs stretched back, 
apparently in articulo mortis. The rigid bit of 
body was cold to her touch, and the only hopeful 
sign was that shrill, protesting chirp, into which 
all remaining vitality seemed to be forced. Hold- 
ing the downy ball compassionately between her 
palms, this ineffectual giantess — from Microbe's 
point of view — reflected on the possibilities of the 
situation only to be baffled. The kitchen fire was 
out, the oven had not a hint of warmth in it, there 
was no hot water for the rubber bag. Besides, 
the chicken seemed too far gone for restoration, 
and she guiltily smothered him away under the 
fold of cotton batting and retreated to her cham- 
ber. But Microbe had by no means surrendered 
his sacred little claims to life, liberty and the pur- 
suit of happiness. The persistent prick of his 



254 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

muffled, frantic cries drove sleep from her pillow. 
She rose once more and, by Inspiration, carried 
the diminutive mansion down cellar, where she 
placed it on top of the furnace! Instantly the 
genial heat reached that exhausted chick, who had 
battled for It so valiantly and long. The white- 
barred lids slipped up over the round black eyes 
— for chickens literally "shut their peepers up" — > 
and he was asleep before his rescuer had turned 
away. 

Joy-of-Life did not believe such a day-old atom 
of mortality could survive this woeful night. She 
came to my bedside at the breakfast hour and 
prepared me solemnly for word of Microbe's pre- 
mature decease. But little did we know as yet 
the meaning of that maligned phrase **chicken- 
hearted." She descended at a funereal pace to 
the cellar, but with the sound of her swift return- 
ing feet I laughed to hear, clearer from stair to 
stair, an eager, spirited little pipe, "Chip, chip, 
chip! What's up now? Where are we going on 
this trip, trip?" 

Such a wide-awake, enterprising speck of poul- 
try It was that Joy-of-LIfe proudly set upon the 
counterpane ! He gave prompt proof of his ac- 



AN EASTER CHICK 255 

tivity by scrambling madly for my plate, and flut- 
tered down, with yellow winglets spread, exactly 
in the center of my slice of toast. 

"It's spring chicken on toast he's giving yez," 
cried our delighted Mary, and in honor of that 
ready display of Irish humor, his name was 
forthwith abbreviated to Mike. 

Then he hopped up into my neck, cuddled down, 
sang a little, contented song and went off to sleep 
again, waking to find himself the ruler of the 
roost. 

Word of our mutual devotion went abroad and 
forthwith the critics began. A high-minded 
friend sent word that if she heard of my lavish- 
ing any more affection on that ridiculous little 
rooster, she would come and wring his yellow 
neck, and even the Madre herself, she who had 
borne with my foibles longest and most indul- 
gently, wrote in a flash of scandalous uncharlty 
that she wished I would rest content with the wild 
birds that God had made, and not waste attention 
on an illegitimate, incubator chicken. 

But "God be with trewthe qwer he be I" The 
foolish fact is that, in the restlessness of con- 
valescence, when work and worry, thought and 



256 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

humanity must still be shooed from the threshold, 
I found hourly mirth and comfort in that dot of 
sunshine. The phenomenal mists and rains of 
this first April of the new century caused such a 
dearth of golden lights in the world that a yellow 
chicken acquired peculiar values. The furnace- 
man said he was a Wyandotte and, as a feminine 
household, we Invariably put absolute faith in the 
word of our furnace-man. I do not know how 
iWyandottes ought to look, but I know that this 
was a daffodil-colored mite, with legs and feet 
more slender than chicken wont, and with a hun- 
dred diverting, confiding, tyrannical little ways. 

I never ceased marveling at the pluck with 
which this Lilliputian tackled life in the midst of 
such Brobdingnaglan surroundings. The only 
time I ever saw him scared was when a guest, so 
well acquainted with chickens as to venture on 
personal liberties, flourished her glove over the 
graveled box that served poor little Mike for his 
Earthly Paradise. 

''Squawk! squawk!" he cried in an agitated 
pipe I had not heard before, and scrabbled wildly 
to the shelter of my hand, nestling out of sight 
under the palm in his favorite fashion. 



AN EASTER CHICK 257 

"Did you hear him call hawk, hawk?'' asked 
my erudite visitor. *'We have an old biddy at 
home who nurses a grudge against me this week 
because I will not let her set, and the last time I 
went out into the henyard, if she didn't scream 
hawk, hawk, just like that, and send the chickens 
scuttling to cover under the barn! The hateful 
thing ! She knew how insulted I would feel to be 
taken for a hawk!" 

But apart from that trying occasion, Mike was 
a scrap of valor. No member of the family was 
tall enough to disconcert him. He pecked what- 
ever he saw, from his own feet to the register, 
and would pounce like a baby pirate upon objects 
many times larger than himself, cheeping to the 
world his tidings of magnificent discovery. I am 
no pastoral linguist, but I learned the rudiments 
of chicken language from Mike, who was such a 
chatterbox that he twittered in his sleep. 

Meal-times, which he liked to have occur every 
hour from dawn to dark, brought out his conver- 
sational fluency at its best. We tried many ex- 
periments with his diet, in obedience to many 
counselors. We were told that his Indian meal 
should be mixed with scalding water, that he was 



258 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

too young for this hearty dish and should be fed 
with dry oatmeal, that minute crumbs of bread 
would comfort his crop, that larger bits of bread, 
kindly masticated in advance, were better, that 
sour milk was essential, mashed potato indispensa- 
ble, string beans a plausible substitute for angle- 
worms, that he must be given a chance to swallow 
gravel to assist the grinding in his wee gizzard 
mill, and that his cereals should be discreetly 
spiced with grubs and lettuce leaves and such 
spring dainties. Whatever we were told to do, 
we did. Mike's repasts were thus seasons to him 
of delicious excitement, and he would tear de- 
liriously from one end of his box to the other, 
pecking to right and left, exclaiming in high glee, 
"Tweet, tweet! Something to eat! Bless my 
pin-feathers! Here's a treat!" 

This up-to-date son of an incubator had an ob- 
stinate instinct in him which made the tap of my 
linger on the floor of his box equivalent to the 
tattoo of a hen's bill beside some scratched-up 
delicacy, and it was funny to see him rush to the 
sound, his black eyes shining with joyous expect- 
ancy. So queerly did instinct serve him that he 
would grab the goody as If a brood of famished 



AN EASTER CHICK 259 

brothers were on his heels and, spreading his bits 
of wings, race off with his prize, most indis- 
creetly shrilling as he went, *^TwIt, twit, twit! 
You shan't have a bit,'' and gobbling it down in 
a corner with choking precipitation. 

One of the "Arrows of the Wise'' carries the 
point, "Be not Idle and you shall not be longing," 
and I had no chance to miss my customary voca- 
tions with this importunate cockerel demanding 
constant society and care. 

Hatched to the vain anticipation of brooding 
wings and crooning cluck and the restless pres- 
sure of other downy little bodies all about him, 
Mike was a lonesome chick and could not bear 
to have his sorry substitute for a mother-hen out 
of sight and sound a minute. His box must be 
within reach of my hand, whither every few min- 
utes he would run for a snuggle and a snooze, 
turning a disdainful back on the elaborate hot- 
water-bottle and cotton-batting shelters I had 
been at such pains to erect. The life In him 
craved contact with life. If I withdrew my hand, 
having occasionally other uses for It, or neglected 
to respond to his casual remarks, my ears would 
suddenly be assailed by a storm of piteous chirps, 



26o SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

the neck would stretch until two round eyes peered 
anxiously above his castle wall, and then, with 
clamber and scramble, that indomitable little 
spirit would achieve the impossible and land a 
fluttering fluff-ball against my face. When I was 
well enough to move from room to room Mike 
would dare the most terrific tumbles from his box 
to come chasing after, though every threshold 
was a towering obstacle over which a Labor 
Union of wings and legs could barely carry him. 
After he had eaten his supper, with undimin- 
ished enthusiasm, and had drunk his fill from a 
butter-plate, lifting his yellow bill to heaven with 
every drink, and giving thanks, as all good 
chickens do, we used to tuck him away in a basket. 
At first we buried him deep under a light mass of 
cotton-wool, from the precise center of whose 
surface his head would shine out in the morning 
like a star set in fleecy clouds ; but the chief of our 
advisory council warned us that the films might 
get into his eyes and down his gullet with disas- 
trous results, and suggested instead the use of a 
retired table-scarf. Chicken in the cloth, cloth in 
the basket, basket on the register, the family 
would compose itself to listen to the "Life of 



AN EASTER CHICK 261 

Huxley," while the softest, drowsiest nest song, 
**Tweety-tweet ! Tweety-tweet !" from the depths 
of the table-scarf accompanied the voice of the 
reader. The elfin music-box would fall silent 
presently, but when bedtime came, and Joy-of- 
Llfe, before taking the basket down cellar to hang 
it near the furnace for the night, brought It to 
me that I might ask, no matter how quietly, "All 
well, Mike?" a dreamy little note would Instantly 
float back, "Tweety-tweet ! Sleeping sweet!" 

We grew so fond of our pet as to dislike to see 
him deprived of the natural companionship of 
chlckenhood, and two other downy midgets — a 
Penciled Brahmapootra, the gift of the market- 
man, and a Plymouth Rock, from the Lady of 
Cedar Hill — were procured to bear him company. 
The first we dubbed Patience, as the proper asso- 
ciate of a Microbe, but this beautiful little fowl, 
whose golden face and delicately striped body 
gave It a wild-bird look, developed such shillalah 
characteristics, especially when Mike made off 
with the choice morsels, that his name was speed- 
ily curtailed to Pat. The Plymouth Rock was 
called Cluxley, In memory of our evening read- 
ings; but a meek. Illogical, not to say unscientific 



262 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

henny-penny she proved, who would stand gazing 
on a dainty until one of her foster-brothers had 
snatched It up and then industriously go and 
scratch for It In all the places where it never could 
have been. Pat was a self-reliant, material- 
minded younker, and we let him go his own lively 
way, with the minimum of handling, but our 
brown Cluxley was of a clinging disposition and 
had an embarrassing habit of imperiling her life 
by stealthy excursions up loose sleeves. Mike did 
not welcome these birds of his own feather any 
too cordially and held somewhat aloof from them 
to the end. One of my students sent in a pair of 
dainty blue slippers, fortunately too small, as 
thus my conscience was clear in devoting them to 
the welfare of my immediate brood; but I always 
had to see to it that Mike and Pat took their 
siestas in separate slippers, where they would 
drowsily flute away in musical rivalry. Cluxley, 
with her customary indiscretion, bestowed herself 
one day in a damp rubber for her nap and caught 
a bad cold, which we successfully doctored with 
hempseed. 

Mike had begun to show signs of feathers and 
once he tried to crow. He had become less de- 



AN EASTER CHICK 263 

pendent on me for intimate society, his attention 
being much taken up with thwarting Pat's designs 
on the tidbits, but he could by no means dispense 
with me as general protector. If I were in the 
room, or close beside them in a steamer chair out 
of doors, he was willing to ramble a bit with Pat 
and Cluxley, always taking the lead, but I could 
not slip away and leave them, even in Mary's 
charge, without Immediate consternation, protest 
and pursuit on Microbe's part. He was such a 
humanized chicken, coming at the call of his name, 
loving to eat from the finger, cocking his little 
head so sagely when he was addressed and po- 
litely cheeping a response, that he became peril- 
ously attractive to the children of the neighbor- 
hood. Sturdy schoolboys would kiss his yellow 
softness on the sly and we often had to rescue 
him from the unskillful clutch of loving childish 
hands. 

When a luncheon was brought to me out of 
doors, all three chickens would come winging and 
scrabbling up the rug that wrapped the sorceress 
of the steamer-chair and dispose themselves about 
the edge of the tray, chirping continuous amens 
to the grace steeped in ancient witchcraft: 



264 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

"Spread, table, spread. 
Meat, drink and bread. 
Ever may I have 
What I ever crave, 
When I am spread. 
Meat for my black cock, 
And meat for my red." 

Now that I was to be seen outside the house 
with my little brood, kindly neighbors came from 
all sides with offers of more chickens, but my 
family cares were already heavy for a convales- 
cent, and experience had taught me that 

"true happiness 
Consists not in the multitude of friends, 
But in the worth and choice." 

Occasional misgivings as to the future crossed 
my mind. I had often seen reposing sheep block- 
ing up the doorways of Andalusian homes, — 
Easter lambs given, all gay with ribbons, to the 
children the year before and still withheld by 
family affection from their natural destiny of mut- 
ton. The Dryad looked forward with glee to my 
appearance on the academic platform with three 
full-grown fowls roosting on the back of my chair 
or stalking up and down the desk, picking up bits 
of chalk and pencil whittlings, but such embar- 
rassments were not to be. 



AN EASTER CHICK 265 

Mike was the first to sicken. His name may 
have been against him or the long confinement in 
the basket may have injured him. The table- 
scarf may have been too heavy to admit of his 
standing and moving during the night as a chicken 
should. He suddenly became crippled, as with 
paralysis. One morning, although he break- 
fasted with abundant relish, he insisted on hiding 
in my hand immediately after. I wanted him to 
run about for exercise, and twenty times put him 
back into his box, but he returned to me twenty- 
one and had his own way for a while, until Mary 
played the kidnapper. Coming down stairs half 
an hour later I heard her remonstrating with 
Mike, who was cheeping wildly. 

"Faith, Mike, yeVe that onraysonable I can't 
plaze yez any how. There's Pat and Cluxley as 
good as clover in the kitchen, but I let yez into 
the dining-room, and still yeVe discontinted, and 
now IVe let yez into the parlor, Mike, and not 
the parlor is good enough. Whativer is it that 
ye can be wanting ?'* 

Poor Chicken Little I He heard my voice and 
started to meet me, but with such hobbling, stag- 
gering, bewildered steps that, at last, the threshold 



266 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

overthrew him. We did for him what we knew — 
and we knew nothing — ^that day and the next, and 
he sang his tuneful tweety-tweet on Monday night; 
but on Tuesday morning, a fortnight from his 
coming, when I asked for my chicken, they 
brought me a ghastly little form lying among 
primroses. 

I might say that I met the loss of my tiny com- 
rade with adult dignity and composure, but 

"Syr, for lying, though I can do it, 
Yet am I loth for to goo to it." 

The core of my grief is the sense that my blun- 
dering devotion cut short, on the very edge of 
spring, that gallant little life which brought help 
to me in my heavy hour, and which had in it all 
the promise of a Chaucer chanticleer. 

In deep humiliation, we forthwith gave Pat and 
Cluxley over to higher intelligence than ours, to 
a neighbor's hen who had no narrow parental 
prejudices, but amply gathered them in with her 
own brood. Pat was the beauty of the coop, but 
in a day or so his legs began to waver and sink 
under him, and he, too, never knew a Maytime. 
Cluxley was always the belated one and outlived 



AN EASTER CHICK 267 

him some three days, but on the fourth morning 
she went staggering Into the undiscovered realm. 

People say, "But you did well to keep your 
Easter chicken alive fourteen days. If the truth 
were known, you would find that very few of 
those candy-sale chickens hold out so long as that. 
We bought one for the children, but It was dead 
before Sunday. It Is next to Impossible to raise 
chickens by hand, even with experience. As to 
the ducklings that are coming Into fashion for 
Easter gifts, they die sooner than chickens.'' 

Then to our moral, for Mike's small story 
surely has a moral, though It does not matter In 
the least to Mike. I have no delusions there. 

"All men are 
Philosophers to their inches," 

but chickens' Inches are so very few that there is 
no room for altruism In their philosophy. Yet the 
thought of how much these wee Innocents may 
suffer from the Incompetence of those who so 
lightly assume their fostering urges a protest 
against keeping Easter, the Festival of Life, by 
such wanton sacrifice of life. How can we re- 
proach the Spaniards, who celebrate tlieir Easter 



268 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

by the merciless bullfight, while we permit this 
cruelty to tender chickenhood? 

A chicken's death is not more trivial than a 
sparrow's fall. St. Francis of Assisi would have 
cared. 

But beneath it all lies the old, dark problem of 
creature existence. They are so ready to trust 
and love us, these feathered and furred com- 
panions of ours on the strange, bright star that 
whirls us all through the vast of ether to an un- 
known rhythm, and we, with a lordly selfishness 
that scoffs at question, slaughter them for our 
food and clothing, hunt them for our sport, make 
them our drudges in peace and our victims in war. 
I can never forget the eyes of a calf that ran to 
me from his butcher in Norway, — of a kid that 
I saw struggling away from the knife on Passover 
eve in Palestine. Yet such is the order of the 
earth. All carnivorous creatures prey upon the 
weaker. Water and wood and field and air are 
but varying scenes of the unpausing tragedy. 
Why, if it must be so, were these doomed animals 
endowed with the awful gift of suffering? And 
what recompense, even in the far reaches of eter- 
nity, can their Creator make to these myriad mar- 



AN EASTER CHICK 269 

tyrs for their griefs and tortures? Is He the God 
of Hardy's The Dynasts^ careless of mortal 
agonies? There dwelt a truer God in Shelley's 
heart, the cor cordium of him who wrote: 

^*I wish no living thing to suflFer pain." 



HOW BIRDS WERE MADE 

Above his forests bowed the Spirit, dreaming 

Of maize and wigwams and a tawny folk 

Who should rejoice with him when autumn broke 

Upon the woods in many-colored flame. 

Pale birches, maples gleaming 

In splendor of all gold and crimson tints, 

And dark-green balsams with their purple hints 

Of cones erect upon the stem, awoke 

In his deep heart, 

Though thought had yet no words, 

Beauty no name, 

Creative longing for a voice, a song 

Blither than winds or brooklet's tinkling flow, 

His own joy's counterpart. 

He breathed upon the throng 

Of wondering trees, and lol 

Their leaves were birds. 

The birds do not forget, but love to fellow 
The trees whose shining colonies they were; 
Else wherefore should the scarlet tanager 
Fling from the oak his proud, exultant flush 
Of music? Why mid yellow 
Sprays of the willow by her empty nest 
Lingers the golden warbler? Softly drest 
In autumn bufi^s and russets, chorister 
Sweetest of all, 
Angel of lonely eves, 
The hermit thrush 



Haunts the November woodland. In them bides 
Memory of that far time, ere eyes of men 
Had seen the tender fall 
Of shadow or the tides 
Of silver sunrise, when 
The birds were leaves. 



TAKA AND KOMA 

"What madness is it to take upon us to know a thing by 
that it is not? Shall we perswade our selves that wee know 
what thing a Camell is, because wee know it is not a Frogge?" 
— ^Barckley's Felicitie of Man. 1603. 

To console me for the loss of the chicks, Joy- 
of-Life went into a Boston bird-store one day and, 
in defiance of all her principles and mine, bought 
me a Japanese robin. When she presented him, 
the daintiest little fellow, mouse-color, with 
touches of red and gold on wings and throat and 
the prettiest pink bill, I met her guilty look with 
one of sheer astonishment. 

"A Robin Redbreast in a cage 
Puts all Heaven in a rage," 

I quoted. 

"But he was in a cage already," she weakly 
apologized, "and we'll be very good to him." 

"Good jailers r 

"But liberty here would be his undoing, and I 

can't take him over to Japan. Come I It's time 

that you said thank-you." 

272 



TAKA AND KOMA 273 

But Taka, named after a Japanese boy of Joy- 
of-LIfe's earlier acquaintance, proved a dubious 
blessing. He was In angry temper from the first, 
and a brilliant new cage, fitted up with all the 
modern conveniences and latest luxuries, failed to 
appease him in the least. He would thrust his 
head between the gilded bars so violently that he 
could not draw it back, and while we were doing 
our clumsy best to extricate him he would peck 
our fingers with furious ingratitude. He upset 
his porcelain dishes, declined to use his swing and, 
as a rule, rejected all the attractions of his criss- 
cross perches, fluttering back and forth and madly 
beating against the bars or huddling in an un- 
happy little bundle on the floor. It was a matter 
of weeks before we could coax him into conversa- 
tion, and then his abrupt, metallic chirps were so 
sharp that Mary, who scorned and disliked him 
as a foreigner, was scandalized. 

"Don't ye talk with him. It^s all sauce that 
Jap is giving yez." 

Even Robin Hood, social little fellow that he 
was, tried in vain, later on, to make friends with 
this ungracious stranger. The East and the West 
could not meet. In response to Robin's cheery 



274 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

chatter, Taka would bristle, turn away and main- 
tain a stubborn silence. 

I used to carry his cage out of doors with me 
and set it up on the bank, where crocuses followed 
snowdrops, and tulips followed crocuses, beside 
the steamer-chair, hoping that he would feel more 
at home amid the blossoms and bird music of the 
spring. But there little Lord Sulks would sit, 
bunched into a corner of his palace, deigning no 
response whatever to the soft greetings of the 
bluebirds, those "violets of song," nor to the 
ecstatic trills of the fox sparrows, nor even to the 
ringing challenge of Lieutenant Redwing, as he 
flashed by overhead on his way to Tupelo swamp. 

A calling ornithologist examined Taka care- 
fully and concluded that he was an old bird, al- 
though the dealer had glibly represented him as 
being in the very pink of youth. So our poor 
prisoner was perhaps not born in captivity and 
may have had more than ancestral memories of 
spreading rice fields, tea plantations and holy 
bamboo groves. Our brave blue squills, our 
sunny forsythias, our coral-tinted laurels could 
not break his dream of flushing lotus and flaming 
azalea. What was our far-off glimpse of silvery 



TAKA AND KOMA 275 

Wachusett to the radiant glories of sea-girt Fuji- 
yama? I hinted that a pet monkey might solace 
his nostalgia, but to such suggestion Joy-of-Life 
remained persistently deaf. 

The children of the neighborhood found him, 
sullen though he was, a center of fascination, and 
would crowd about his cage, pointing out to one 
another the jewel tints in his plumage. 

"Cutest bird I ever seed 'cept the flicker," pro- 
nounced Snippet, whose straw-colored hair stood 
out like a halo. 

"Chickadees are nicer'n flickers," protested 
wise little Goody Four-Eyes. "A chickadee eats 
three hundred cankerworms in a day and over fivQ 
thousand eggs — when he can get 'em." 

The boys gave a choral snort. 

"Who does the countin' ?" demanded Punch. 

"Wish rd been born with all the learnin' in 
me," scoffed Snippet. 

But Goody, who had gathered many a pine- 
cone for our feeding-boxes and, her snub nose 
pressed snubbier yet against the window pane, had 
watched the black-capped rolypolies twitch out the 
winged seeds, stood her ground. 



276 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

"Does, too," she averred stoutly. "Boys don't 
know about birds. They stone 'em.'* 

"And girls wear feathers in their hats." 

"I don't, but Snippet's mamma does." 

"Doesn't neither. She jes' wears regrets on 
Sunday." 

"You don't say it right, but you're nothin' but 
a small boy." 

"I'm seven," blustered Snippet, "and I think 
I'd be eight by now, if I hadn't had the measles." 

"Where's Taka?" I exclaimed. 

In the jostling of the children about the cage, 
the door, accidentally or not, had been slipped 
ajar, and Taka, taking advantage of the heat of 
the discussion, had escaped. 

The youngsters raised a whoop that might well 
have scared him to the Pacific, but not the stir of 
a bird-wing could be perceived anywhere about. 

Cats! 

"Run to the house. Punch, please, and call out 
everybody to help us find Taka." 

I had selected Punch as the boy of longest legs, 
forgetting his partiality for Mary's doughnut jar. 
He chose the route through the pantry with the 
result that when, after a suspiciously long inter- 



TAKA AND KOMA 277 

val, the rescue party arrived, Mary was dancing 
with wrath. 

"Shure," she panted, "that gossoon would be 
a good missenger to sind for Death, for he 
wouldn't be after gitting him here in a hurry at 
all at all." 

We hunted and we hunted and we hunted. We 
hunted high in the trees, which the boys and 
Goody, too, climbed with an activity that sur- 
prised the woodpeckers; we hunted low in the 
grass, interrupting a circle of squirrels gathered 
around a toadstool, as around a birthday cake; 
but no sign of Taka. We searched hedges and 
shrubbery, but no Taka. We chirped and we 
whistled, though well aware that even if Taka 
heard us he would not answer. 

The western sky was a brighter red than 
Goody's hair-ribbon before we sat ourselves down, 
discouraged, on the piazza steps to wait for Joy- 
of-Life. 

One by one the children had been summoned 
home, all but Wallace. He had by telephone di- 
rected his parents, who used to be older than he 
but whom he now watched over with solicitude, 



278 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

to eat their supper without him and go to bed as 
usual in case he should be detained. 

"I don't Hke to think of that little goldy head 
out in the big dark all night," I said. 

"Maybe a star will suppose it's another star 
and come down and stay with it," suggested Wal- 
lace, trying to buttress my sagging courage. 

"His winglets are so wild and so weak." 

"I believe the other birds know where he is. 
Please tell us," entreated Wallace, addressing a 
solemn crow that had just flapped over from the 
wood to a neighboring fence-post. 

*'Now it's no use to be asking of His Rlver- 
ence," put In Mary. "All the crows were 
prastes once and they talk only the Latin." 

It was one of Joy-of-LIfe's miracles. It was 
almost dark when, tired and hungry, she came 
home from Boston, — from a committee meeting 
of philanthropists who had been quarreling as 
only philanthropists can. She looked into Taka's 
empty cage, stayed but for a glass of milk and a 
few inquiries as to our field of search, and then, 
taking an electric torch, slipped softly Into Giant 
Bluff's cherished tangle of luxuriant rosebushes, 
where the rest of us had not dared to venture. 



I 



TAKA AND KOMA 279 

In a few minutes she emerged, scores of irate 
briars catching at her clothes and hair. She was 
crooning as she came out and in her safe clasp 
nestled a sleepy little bird. 

Soon after this episode, Joy-of-Life went west 
for her summer sojourn among the birds at a 
Wisconsin lake, leaving to Mary, Robin Hood 
and myself the guardianship of that forlorn mite. 
He was as obstinate as ever in his lonesomeness, 
always pettishly rebuffing the friendly advances 
of Robin and, though I would take his cage to 
the vicinity of bird after bird, hoping that In some 
one of these he might recognize a kindred spirit, 
he found nothing of his feather. The white-* 
breasted nuthatch, after nearly two months of ab- 
sence, presumably for the rearing of a brood in 
leafy seclusion, returned for a call at the feeding- 
box, looking as genteel as ever in his tailor-made 
gray suit, but so preoccupied with domestic mem- 
ories that at first he would say nothing but 
*'SpankI spank! spank I" I brought Taka to the 
window and he looked on disdainfully while I 
tried to win Nuthatch back to his winter phrase 
of 'Thank I thank I thank I'' Only once did he 
revert to bachelor freedom of expression. That 



28o SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

was when he fluttered up to the nutmeat bag and 
found It dangling empty: 

"What a prank, prank, prank, to rob my bank, 
bank, bank! oh, the offense is rank, rank, rank!" 

At this explosion of resentment Taka gave an 
involuntary chirp, and Nuthatch, the most inquisi- 
tive and alert of all our bird visitors, looked the 
stranger over keenly before he retorted with 
shocking rudeness, "You're a crank, crank, crank," 
and flew off to see what the brown creeper, zig- 
zagging wrong side up about the rough-barked 
trunk of an old oak, was finding good to eat. 

Once I carried Taka well out Into the wild- 
wood, but he was not interested in any of Its busy 
tenants, — not In little Chippy, who all but pushed 
his russet crown between the bars of the cage, nor 
In Yellow-Hammer, stabbing the ground for ants, 
nor in 

*'yon<Jer thrush, 
Schooling Its half-fledged little ones to brush 
About the dewy forest" 

At last, one afternoon, after Taka had been 
moping for hours in deeper gloom than usual, 
I impulsively held up a hand-glass before him. 
As soon as the solitary caught sight of that other 



TAKA AND KOMA 281 

Japanese robin he broke out into excited chirps 
and twitters, and suddenly, to my astonishment^ 
caroled forth a ravishing song. I hastily put the 
glass away, but he began calling, calling, calling 
with a wistful eagerness that could not be en- 
dured. He kept It up till dark and began It again 
at dawn, so hopefully, so yearningly, that, prin- 
ciples or no principles, there was only one thing 
to do. 

I went Into Boston that morning and, stopping 
at a Japanese store, asked their word for robin. 

"Koma-dorl, or Little Bird, usually called 
Koma, the Little One." 

So on I fared to the bird-dealer's and bought 
Koma for Joy-of-LIfe. He was the only Jap-' 
anese robin they had left, and the dealer swore 
that he was Taka's brother, but I suspected that 
the relationship was nearer that of great-great- 
grandson, for Koma, smaller than Taka, of 
brighter gold and more vivid ruby, was the quin- 
tessence of vital energy, a very spark of fire. He 
fought like a mimic Hector while the dealer was 
catching and boxing him, and all the gay-hued 
parrots jumped up and down on their perches and 



^82 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

screamed with the fun of having something going 
on. 

The dealer declared that the two birds would 
thrive best in the same cage; so I introduced 
Koma into Taka's commodious abode that after- 
noon and listened in high content to their jubilant 
bursts of song. They went to sleep on the highest 
perch with their tiny bodies cuddled close to- 
gether, but during the following week their love 
lyric was punctuated by several fights. Taka, 
hitherto so contemptuous of the comforts of his 
cage, now wanted to swing whenever he saw Koma 
swinging and insisted on shoving his guest away 
and eating from the very seed-cup that Koma had 
selected, whereupon Koma, a glistening ruiBe of 
wrath, would fling himself in furious attack upon 
his honorable ancestor. 

Mary, whose partiality for Koma, little beauty 
that he was, attempted no disguise, maintained 
that Taka always began the combats and was 
always worsted; but I was not so sure. Koma, a 
restless gleam of chirp and song, was such a vio- 
lent character that twice he rammed his head be- 
tween the upper wires of his cage and nearly 
hanged himself. Some heathen deity had given 



TAKA AND KOMA 2S3, 

him, for his protection, a tremendous voice, and 
his shrieks soon brought me running to his rescue. 
Both times, as soon as I had parted the wire and 
released the lustrous little head, Taka, wildly agi- 
tated through the minutes of Koma's peril, turned 
fiercely upon me and accused me of the trap. 

''You did it! Ugly thing! You did it! You 
nearly killed my Koma." 

And poor little Koma, gasping In the gravel, 
would chime in faintly but with no less resentment, 
''She did it." 

Yet within an hour they might be fighting again, 
and I would find them spent and panting, glaring 
at one another from opposite sides of their lim- 
ited arena, with deep cuts about the little warrior 
faces. 

**Taka," I would remonstrate, ^'aren't you 
ashamed to treat your own clansman like this, 
when you wanted him so much?" 

But Taka and penitence were far asunder. 
**It'9 my last tail-feather — chir-r-rl Koma, he 
hasn't anv tail at all — chir-r-r I No more have 
I now. Don't care a grub. I pulled his out. 
Catch me that fly, can't you? Who-00-oo-oop!'* 

Koma, whose song had an entrancing g}T)sy 



284 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

note, was so much the wilder of the two that Taka 
seemed comparatively tame. Koma's terror of 
human monsters was unconquerable, and his 
panics, whenever one of us neared the cage, soon 
destroyed the frail confidence that our long pa- 
tience had been building up in Taka. Presently 
we had two out-and-out rebels on our hands, and 
even Dame Gentle, who *'had a way" with birds, 
•could not cajole them into a League of Lovers.^ 

When the cage door was opened for putting in 
or taking out the small glass bathtub, it was a 
ticklish matter to prevent their escape, for they • 
could dart like mice through the least crack and, 
sly atoms of conspiracy, were always on the look- 
out for a chance. Warned by bitter experience, 
we saw to it that the windows were closed before 
that perilous task was undertaken, but too often 
a victorious squeal from Koma would announce 
his exit, and Taka, hopping in sympathetic exulta- 
tion from perch to perch, would urge him on with 
ancient Japanese war-cries while he soared from 
mantel to chandelier, vanished in the folds of a 
portiere or flashed from fern to rubber-plant. If 
he succeeded in reaching the entry, he would pro- 
long the game by hiding in overshoes ai»^ tim- 



TAKA AND KOMA 285 

brellas, while Taka, now that Koma was away, 
would at once set up his pleading, poignant call 
and never cease until the truant, snapping his pink 
bill and kicking fiercely with scratchy little claws, 
was thrust back into the cage. Much as Taka 
might play the tyrant, he could not bear having 
Koma out of his sight and reach. Once, after an 
especially savage duel in which Koma had been 
badly trampled and pecked, we put the wounded 
hero into a cage of his own and hung It in the 
adjoining room. Forthwith both those scamplings 
raised such a prodigious outcry and lament, taking 
on as if their naughty specks of hearts were 
broken, that we brought back Koma's cage and 
hung It in the window beside Taka's. But even 
so they scolded and protested and, as the shadows 
fell, established themselves each on the extreme 
end of a perch, as near one another as they could 
get, but with the cruel wires and a few Inches of 
space between them. Still they fumed and fretted 
until we returned Koma, mauled as he was, to 
Taka's cage, when instantly they nestled their 
plumy sides close together and blissfully went to 
sleep. 

Yet we kept both cages in use, separating our 



286 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

tiny incorrlgibles when their battles waxed dan- 
gerous. They loved to talk them all over after- 
wards, gabbling like schoolboys, but if one of us 
chanced to approach the window — *'Sshh! Don't 
tell the ogre," and in an instant they were dumb 
as toy idols. When we had time, we would occa- 
sionally, after taking all due precautions, throw 
wide their cage doors and invite them to enjoy 
the freedom of the room; but liberty so given 
they despised. Only stolen fruit is sweet. After 
much deliberation and consultation, they would 
stealthily steal out and skurry about the floor like 
rats for a while, hunting for bugs and worms. 
When it became evident that our i*ugs did not 
furnish such refreshment, they would cuddle up 
together in Taka's cage and spoon. Koma would 
tuck his shining wee head down on Taka's shoul- 
der, and Taka would gently peck him all over 
from the tip of his bill to his claws. Then, more 
often than not, they would bristle and square for 
the fun of a light. At this point we would try 
to catch Koma and put him back into his own 
safe cage, but even when his little coxcomb was 
so bloody that I had to wash it oE under the 
faucet, he was the top of ingratitude, gasping and 



TAKA AND KOMA 287 

clattering with fury. All the while Taka, who 
had cut that poor pate open, would be trilling 
abuse. A pugnacious pair of fairy Japanese 
pirates they were ! 

We kept those midgets, a daily trouble and 
amusement, through the winter. They sang like 
angels when it pleased them and In the intervals 
conversed exclusively with each other In a harsh, 
metallic chatter that filled the house. But one 
sad June morning we found Taka In the bottom 
of the cage, on his back, the uplifted claws patheti- 
cally curled, the wee body stiff and cold. 

"The bird is dead 
That we have made so much on." 

Koma knew what had happened and bewailed 
his loss In such a shrill. Incessant keening that 
when, a few days later, an east wind gave him a 
swiftly fatal chill, we could only be glad to have 
that pitiful piping hushed. 

Little aliens I We had never known them. 



WARBLER WEATHER 

The oak-leaves yet are doubting 
Between the pink and green; 
Half smiling and half pouting 
Our shy New England May 
Touches each happy spray, 
And at her call the runaway 
Warbler tribes convene. 

The gold-flecked Myrtle flitters, 

The Redstart dives and spins, 

The gay Magnolia glitters, 

The little Rubycrown 

Twinkles up and down; 

The fairy folk have come to town 

With all their violins. 

Our garden party sparkles 

With varied warbler wear, 

The olive suit that darkles 

To umber, russet crest. 

Blue tippet, crocus vest; 

New fashions come with every guest, 

Winged jewels of the air. 

Their treetop conversation 
Is sweetest of the sweet, 
With flashes of flirtation 
As gallants bow and dip. 
^Witch-e-wee!" "Cher!" "Chip-chip!" 
Too elfin fine for human lip 
Their dainty: "Tzeet! tzeet! tzeet!" 



When we shall walk together 
In Paradise, Most Dear, 
May it be warbler weather, 
Divine with flutterings 
Of exquisite wee wings, 
Our own familiar angelings 
That piped God's praises here. 



SUMMER RESIDENTS AT A 
WISCONSIN LAKE 

By Katharine Coman 

"Another beautiful day of sunshine and shimmering leaves 
and bird-notes and human love." 

— Katharine Coman: Letter. 

The summer resort in question is only one of 
the numberless lakelets that dot the hill country 
of Wisconsin; a mere dimple in the sunny land- 
scape, filled with limpid water. The banks are 
overhung by beautiful lindens and mammoth oaks 
and by hoar cedars of a thousand years' growth. 

So sloping are the shores that reeds and rushes 

run far out into the lake, carrying the green life 

of the earth into the blue heaven of the water. 

Creeks and bayous stretch in turn far back into 

the land, and the reeds and rushes follow after. 

Knee-deep In the swamps stand the tamarack 

trees. Their cool shades cherish the mystery of 

the primeval forest that held undisputed sway in 

this region only fifty years ago. Back on the hills 

290 



SUMMER RESIDENTS 291 

lie rich grain fields and comfortable farmhouses, 
each defined against the sky by its windmill and 
cluster of barns and haystacks. 

This is an ideal summer residence for birds 
who have a mind for domestic joys. Nothing, 
for example, could be better adapted for nesting 
purposes than these cedar trees ; not so much the 
centurled veterans, as the young things of ten or 
twenty years' growth. Their dense and prickly 
foliage promises security from Invasion, while the 
close-set branches offer most attractive bulldlng- 
sites. Here the robins place their substantial 
structures; a masonry of sticks and mud, hol- 
lowed out within Into a chamber as round and 
smooth as if molded on a croquet ball, and lined 
with fine, soft grasses. The catbirds build more 
loosely, weaving strips of cedar bark Into a rough 
basket. The Interior Is softened for the tender 
bodies of the anticipated nestlings by colls of horse 
hair. The mourning dove lays her eggs on a frail 
scaffolding of cedar twigs, with the merest sug- 
gestion of padding. How the eggs are kept In 
place on windy days is a mystery to the uninitiated. 
As for brooding the young, the mother bird soon 
gives over the attempt to do more than sit along- 



292 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

side her twin fledglings. The cedar birds, despite 
their name, are oftenest found in the linden trees. 
[Rowing along the water side one may see the slen- 
der bodies tilting on the top-most branches, flit- 
ting to and fro among the pendant yellow bracts, 
peering shyly this way and that, whispering to 
each other sage words of caution as to the queer- 
ness of all the world "save thee and me, Dor- 
othy." Gentle little Quakers they seem In the 
daintiest of dove-color plumage. They are con- 
noisseurs in the matter of foods, as well as of 
dress. Nothing pleases their palate so well as 
the wild cherries that ripen by the roadside. The 
sweet kernels of the linden fruit are not bad eat- 
ing, however, if one may judge by the quantities 
of split shells to be found beneath the trees. The 
lake is sought out by birds as well as humans for 
the pleasure of bathing in the cool, fresh water. 
Sit quietly by some pebbly bank for a half hour 
or so, and you cannot fail to see robin or bluejay 
or turtledove come down to take his daily plunge. 
The reedy marshes are beloved by the red- 
wings. The thick-set tufts of the cat-o'-nine-tails 
afford ideal sites for summer cottages, with build- 
ing material close at hand. Here, too, the marsh 



SUMMER RESIDENTS 293 

wrens weave their oven-shaped nests and hang 
them among the banners of the iris. The water- 
lily pools are alive with summer folk. Quaint, 
unwieldy bitterns flap their slow way to nests 
well hidden in the reeds. Coots steal in and out 
en route to their lake dwellings. The broad 
green pads offer the Virginia rail a secluded perch, 
where he may consider which quarter of the shin- 
ing mud flats will prove the best feeding ground 
for the day. A trim little figure in gray and tan, 
he gathers no soil from the black ooze through 
which he wades. Another dainty person who 
haunts these same shallows is the spotted sand- 
piper, the much loved "teeter-tail." He runs tip- 
ping along the water's edge, with an occasional 
short flight, as much at home among these placid 
ripples as by the booming sea. The kill-deer 
plover vibrates between the grassy meadow and 
the beach, but he, as well as the sandpiper, pre- 
fers to stake his domestic happiness on dry 
ground. Among the birds of the shore, the king- 
fisher is most in evidence. Conspicuous in blue 
coat, gray waistcoat and broad, white collar, he 
flies along the beach seeking for the dead branches 
of oak or cedar that shall serve him as a look- 



294 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

out station from which to spy upon the finny- 
folk swimming in the water beneath. A flash in 
the air, a splash in the water, and the "expert 
angler" dashes triumphantly home, his watch- 
man's rattle announcing victory and fresh supplies 
to the awkward squad of baby kingfishers deep 
In the clay bank awaiting his arrival. 

Back In the meadows where thistles and wild 
lettuce are going to seed, the hard-bills spend their 
holidays. Goldfinches cling to the thistle tops, 
merry little clowns In yellow and black, antic tum- 
blers no less agile and versatile than the chick- 
adee. Dickcissels search the purple ironweeds for 
provender, and song sparrows flit along the blos- 
soming fence rows. Kingbirds perch at a point 
of vantage and watch their chance for a dash at 
a grasshopper. Fine fighters these fellows, fully 
equal to defending their well-feathered nests 
against all comers, and therefore disdaining con- 
cealment. Bluebirds carol high in the air their 
song of peace on earth and goodwill to man. 
Humming birds hover over the milkweeds, bent 
on extracting not honey only, but toothsome in- 
sects from the rosy blooms. 

The tall oaks are sought out by the orioles, 



SUMMER RESIDENTS 295 

tanagers and grosbeaks, — a brilliant and tuneful 
company. Here, too, the vireos, warbling, red- 
eyed, white-eyed and yellow-throated, spy out in- 
visible insects under the growing leaves. War- 
blers throng the woods in May and June, reveling 
in the bursting buds; but most of them have 
pushed on to Canada for the summer season. 
Only the black and white creeper remains to nest 
in Wisconsin. The resounding tattoo of the high- 
hole rings from the bole of a blasted tree. The 
wood looks as if riddled with bullets. The red- 
headed woodpecker follows close on his yellow- 
winged cousin. Both find an abundant supply of 
ants in the decaying forest. High in a fork of 
the branches the red-tailed hawk pitches his tent, 
a ragged, black wigwam, rivaling that of the crow 
for size and inaccessibility. 

The haunts of men are not wholly eschewed by 
our little brothers of the air. The peewee loves 
to place his nest under the eaves of a sheltering 
porch, and the phoebe is no less sociable. The 
presence of human beings does not at all discon- 
cert their housekeeping arrangements. I have 
seen a young brood fed and fondled, and finally 



296 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

piloted forth for their first journey In the world, 
within ten feet of a hammock full of children. 

To see the water birds at home one should take 
a boat in the early morning or toward nightfall, 
and float silently on the open bosom of the lake. 
Then you may watch the black terns wheeling and 
turning in the blue sky, like beautiful great swal- 
lows. They are easily distinguished even at a 
considerable height by their white wing bars. A 
loon paddles slowly across the bay with tanta- 
lizing unconcern. It is of no use to follow him, 
however, even with muffled oars. He knows a 
trick worth any two of yours. Huge fellow as he 
is, he dives beneath the surface, leaving not a 
ripple behind him. After five minutes of puzzled 
waiting you may see him — or is it his double? — 
pop up from the water many rods away, as serene 
and still as if he had not just executed a subma- 
rine maneuver hardly to be excelled by the latest 
torpedo boat. Quite as expert a performer is 
the pied-billed grebe, who swims long distances 
with body submerged and only the tip of the bill 
out of the water. Unobserving gunners conclude 
that he has gone to the bottom of the lake, and 
call him the hell-diver. The grebe spends half 



SUMMER RESIDENTS 297 

of his life in or on the water. His nest is a raft 
buoyed upon a clump of decaying vegetation, and 
looks like a floating island moored to a reed. 
Birds of the lake, too, seem the swallows — tree 
swallows, rough-winged and barn swallows. They 
skim the water hither and yon in mad pursuit of 
prey. No degree of familiarity with their mud 
nests avails to deprive these winged atoms of their 
halo of spring and romance. 

Birds of high degree occasionally visit our 
humble lakelet. A bald eagle has been seen on 
the lightning-scarred branch of its tallest oak. 
Blue herons flap their majestic way from shore to 
shore. If you were born with a silver spoon in 
your mouth you may even be so lucky as to see a 
snowy heron passing through to some heronry 
in the wilds of Canada. The night herons come 
every spring to their ancient rookery in a swamp 
hard by. As the shadows fall the birds may be 
heard calling, *'squawk, squawk," while they 
make their way down the creek to their fishing 
grounds in the lake. 

For the better part of our bird neighbors the 
summer sojourn is no dolce far niente. They come 
north that their babies may have wholesome air 



298 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

and suitable food. A gay young husband, like 
the ruby-throated humming bird, shirks domestic 
responsibilities, but he expects only two wee nest- 
lings. A brood of five or six requires the assidu' 
ous attention of both parents. Baby blue jays, 
for example, seem to have an unlimited appetite. 
Their scolding, snarling cries begin with the early 
dawn and only cease with nightfall. Even after 
the rascals are flown one may find an anxious 
mother vainly striving to satisfy her clamoring 
darlings, as she hurries from one to another with 
some choice tidbit. A great hulking fellow, as 
big as his parents and as gayly feathered, will 
stand crying like an infant, with wings a-tremble 
and mouth a-gape, waiting for the food to be 
thrust down his throat. Young robins are hardly 
less rapacious but far more tractable. I was one 
day watching the debut of a family that lived In 
a neighboring cedar tree. The mother bird was 
having an anxious time, for each young one, as 
he spread his wings, made but a flap or two and 
fell sprawling into the network of branches be- 
neath the nest. One young hopeful essayed a 
more ambitious flight and came down to the 
ground. He had no thought of fear and, being 



SUMMER RESIDENTS 299 

of an inquiring turn of mind, came hopping 
through the grass to see what I was like. Such 
a dear little man, in polka dot pinafore and white 
ruffles! But *'chuck, chuck," mother robin called 
a warning note, and like a flash he turned tail and 
bolted into the bushes. I found him later perched 
on a branch within easy grasp of my hand. He 
gazed at me for some minutes with eyes full of 
baby wonder; then, remembering the maternal ad- 
monitions, he fled to a higher branch. Of all 
feathered mothers the catbird is the noisiest. She 
flits restlessly about, eying from every point of 
vantage the intruder who dares to show an in- 
terest in her housekeeping. I determined to sit 
it out one morning, pitting my patience against 
her sympathy for the hungry young ones. After 
two hours of flutter and meow the mother heart 
could no longer resist the appeal of the gaping yel- 
low mouths. With sudden resolution she dashed 
straight to Farmer Black's gooseberry patch, 
seized a berry and returned in a flash. The lus- 
cious morsel once divided among the small fry, 
however, she flew back to her post of observa- 
tion. 

The turtledoves seem a sentimental lot. Dur- 



300 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

ing the courting season an enamored swain will 
sit for hours in silent contemplation of his own 
graceful pose, or chanting softly, "I am alone- 
alone — alone." The nest once built and the 
young ones hatched, he hovers about in tender 
constancy, bringing food to the mother as well 
as to the babies, and perching alongside of the 
nest as close as circumstances will allow. The lit- 
tle people are carefully tended until they are well- 
nigh grown, though they look most uninteresting 
objects. A young dove will sit silent and motion- 
less for hours at a stretch, the only sign of life 
the glitter in his bright, bead-like eyes. Decide 
that he has gone daft, however, and venture a 
step too near, — presto! With flutter and whirr 
he takes to wings, and is off as if flying was as 
simple a feat as the traditional ^'falling off a log." 
The jaunty kingfisher, too, makes a devoted par- 
ent. One day we saw a fledgling fly straight out 
over the lake. The mother bird followed close, 
uttering cries of alarm. But, alas ! she could not 
lend him wings. His young muscles were unequal 
to his ambition, and the little body dropped into 
the water. Both parents dashed madly back and 
forth over the still, shining surface, and then 



SUMMER RESIDENTS 301 

wandered disconsolately from tree to tree along 
the shore, voicing their grief in wild, rattling 
cries. 

Bird families hold together long after the nest 
is abandoned. They may be seen toward night- 
fall making their way by twos and threes to the 
tamarack swamp across the lake. The close-set, 
symmetrical branches provide the best of perches 
for inexperienced feet. "Birds of a feather flock 
together" when It comes to a question of lodging 
houses. One evening I counted one hundred and 
fifteen kingbirds roosting in the tapering spires 
of the tamarack trees. 

September days are heralded by the return of 
the birds who have summered In Canada. Fox 
sparrows stop with us a week or so on their south- 
ward journey. The evening grosbeaks have come 
down from far Saskatchewan, and are thinking of 
spending the winter here. Wild geese wake one 
o' nights, with their hoarse "honk, honk.'* They 
have stopped for a taste of our tender frogs, but 
will soon re-form their triangular caravans and 
push on to the South. Ducks, mallards and can- 
vasbacks, feed and fatten In the shallow water 
among the reeds. The gunners arrive as soon as 



302 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

they, however, and will soon frighten them away. 
Everybody is getting ready for the great migra- 
tion. Troops of young birds flutter through the 
trees, like autumn leaves blown by a gust of wind. 
They are taking their first lessons in migration 
and in food supply. 

The natives look on at these preparations with 
q^nical unconcern. Blue jays chatter and scream 
with a daily extension of their marvelous vocabu- 
lary. Crows come proudly out from the deep 
woods, leading black, ungainly broods, and direct 
their flight to the ripening cornfields. Nuthatches, 
the white-bellied and the Canadian, bustle about 
the tree trunks, bent on making the most of their 
time while Jack Frost spares the insect life. The 
chickadees, nature's acrobats, turn somersaults 
among the branches in sheer defiance of the law 
of gravitation. The cares of summer are over 
and done with. The woes of winter do not terrify 
this morsel of india rubber and compressed air. 
The English sparrow pursues his ubiquitous 
search for food with insular disdain of everything 
he does not understand. He has penetrated our 
sylvan retreats and secured a foothold here by 
the most impudent of squatter claims. He lives 



SUMMER RESIDENTS 303 

and multiplies by dint of a systematic disregard 
of everybody's rights. The manners and the mor- 
als of the great city cling to him. He will have 
nothing In common with our country ways. He 
brings with him the blight of civilization. 



THE JESTER 

Myths from earth's childhood tell 
Of Godhood visible, — 
Indra, the azure-skied, 
Four-handed, thousand-eyed; 
Far-wandering Isis, chief 
Lady of Love and Grief; 
Zeus, on each rash revolt 
Hurling the thunderbolt; 
Woden of warrior form 
Gray-mantled with the storm; 
Lir of the foam-white hair, 
Mad with the sea's despair. 

But of those Splendors who 
Conceived the kangaroo, 
With gesture humorous 
Shaped hippopotamus, 
Intoned the donkey's bray 
And, in an hour of play, 
Taught peacocks how to strut? 
Holy is Allah, but 
Is holiness expressed 
In hedgehogs? Whence the jest? 
Even in creation's dawn 
Was Puck with Oberon? 



EMILIUS 

"0, I could beat my infinite blockhead." 

— ^Jonson's The Devil is an Ass, 

Professor Emily has the kindest heart in the 
world and is always doing good. Her charities 
.would make a rosary more fragrant than sandal- 
buds. And yet, perhaps, one time out of a thou- 
sand, her intention and her action trip each other 
up. 

One day in early June she met on our village 
sidewalk, half a mile from the nearest pond or 
brook, a snapping turtle of formidable propor- 
tions, easily weighing his twenty or twenty-five 
pounds. In characteristic fashion she stopped to 
consider what she could do for him. Though he 
was, for his own part, neither cordial nor com- 
municative, she decided that he must have lost 
his way, since the water, his natural habitat, lay 
behind him, and by a dexterous application of boot 
and stick she turned him about, quite against his 
will, so that his snout pointed toward home. But 

305 



3o6 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

the turtle, a surly, obstinate fellow, with no re- 
spect whatever for academic authority, refused 
to progress in the appointed path, and for some 
five minutes they argued it out together, with no 
manifest result except a distinct access of temper, 
rather evenly divided. 

Your true philanthropist Is not easily balked, 
and Professor Emily, returning the scrutiny of 
those small, keen, sinister eyes that watched her 
every movement, skillfully dodged that dark, 
vicious head which kept lurching forward from 
the olive-mottled shell In lightning-swift motions, 
seeking to strike this determined benefactor whom 
only muddled wits could mistake for an enemy. 

*'No, you don't," she answered him sternly, re- 
treating before a sudden forward scramble of the 
broad webbed feet. Regardless of the terrified 
protests of a group of freshmen, who had gath- 
ered on the outskirts of the fray, she executed 
a rapid rear movement and seized the reptile firm- 
ly toward the end of Its long, rough tail. Swing- 
ing this furious Caliban clear of the ground and 
holding it well out from her body, she considered 
what to do next. 

The noon had suddenly turned hot. She found 



EMILIUS 307 

herself panting a little. That turtle was surpris- 
ingly heavy. He was awkward to handle, too, 
twisting his neck back over his shell and darting 
it out left and right to a disconcerting distance. 
Soothing tones had no effect whatever and there 
seemed to be no suitable surface to pat. Even 
if he could and would have told her the exact 
location of his native creek, it might prove an irk- 
some task to carry him so far, with those powerful 
jaws snapping most suggestively, only biding their 
time to get in an effective argument. Our house 
was close at hand. Why not accomplish two good 
deeds in one and give this self-willed waif to us 
for a pet? He would have a happy home and 
we another of God's creatures to love. 

Dear Emily! 

A shriek from Mary brought us to the kitchen. 
There was our household staff and stay mounted 
on a chair, clasping her skirts tight about her and 
apparently addressing the celling. There was our 
generous-hearted friend, flushed and weary, but, 
by a miracle, unbltten. There was our neighbor, 
Young Audubon, a budding naturalist, who had 
come to her aid en route and shared the honors 
of the delivery. And there was an Indignant 



SoS SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

snapping turtle, lying on Its back in the middle of 
the kitchen floor. Notwithstanding the pale yel- 
lows of its under-side, shell and legs and tail, its 
expression was profane. 

Joy-of-Life told Mary to be quiet. I poured 
the philanthropist a glass of water. Then, ex- 
changing eloquent glances, we learned of the new 
pleasure In store for us. 

"They make very nice pets," declared the 
donor, beaming with benevolence. "Large speci- 
mens live for hundreds of years. They are not at 
all exacting about their food and can be trained 
to eat from the hand." 

"Not from mine," screamed Mary, bouncing 
up and down on her chair. 

"Wasn't it Pierre LotI who had a pet tor- 
toise?" continued Emily. "Its name was Suleima 
and it used to play with his white kitten. You 
might name the turtle Suleima, after its literary 
cousin." 

"No. We'll name it Emilius, after you, if it 
must be named at all." 

"But we haven't even a black kitten," protested 
Joy-of-Life, "and so little time for playing our- 
selves, that I am really afrai d ^" 



EMILIUS 300 

"The dear might be dull. Wouldn't you better 
take him back to where you found him?'* 

"And leave him on the road? Lost? For 
motors to run over? How could he get out of 
their way? What does he know about motors?" 

We admitted that he did not look modern. 

"Besides, I must run to catch that next train. 
IVe just remembered that I am due at the Melt- 
ing Pot conference in town." 

"Isn't there room for Emilius in the pot?" I 
called after her, but she was gone without wait- 
ing to be thanked. 

"If ye'll put the baste in a suitcase," proposed 
Mary, "it's mesilf will take it over to her rooms 
an' lave it there." 

But Young Audubon, who had been lying on 
the floor, examining Emilius from the tip of his 
tail to the snub of his snout, was enraptured, — 
so enraptured that the chelonian, as he called it, 
was pressed upon him as a free gift, regretfully 
declined because of certain prejudices on the part 
of a devoted but unscientific mother. 

"I can study him almost as well over here," 
cheerily said Young Audubon. "Now the first 
thing to do is to drill a hole in his carapace." 



310 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

"Carry what?" 

"Upper shell, you know." 

The boy, a blond, blushed pink at our igno- 
rance and managed, In an offhand way, to touch 
the lower shell when he lightly referred to it as 
the plastron. 

"The drilling won't hurt him. He won't even 
know it's happening." 

Whatever the darkened spirit, inaccessible in 
its armor, thought of the subsequent proceedings, 
it registered no objection. Defenseless in his un- 
dignified position, Emilius suffered our well-meant 
attentions in bitter silence. The hole was drilled, 
the turtle tipped over, grasped again by his pe- 
culiarly unattractive tail and borne triumphantly 
to the grassy bank behind the house, where, like 
any domestic animal, he was tethered to a tree. 

"What next?" asked Joy-of-Life, who was al- 
ready losing her heart to the unresponsive mon- 
ster. 

"Water," pronounced Sir Oracle. "Turtles 
won't feed except under water. They can't swal- 
low if their heads aren't completely immersed. It 
will take your largest dishpan- " 



EMILIUS 311 

"It's mesilf that is going home to-morrow — 
to stay," announced Mary. 

"Wouldn't a washtub do?" compromised Joy- 
of-Life. "There's that old one, you know, Mary, 
that you never use." 

"First-rate. Show me where to find it, Mary. 
I'll give you a start to that wild cherry." 

With a craft beyond the semblance of his open 
countenance. Young Audubon raced Mary to the 
cellar, where she arrived panting too hard for 
protests. They soon returned In amicable com- 
panionship, carrying a battered blue tub between 
them. 

Jerking up Emilius by the cord, we plumped him 
into the tub, poured in abundant water and left 
him to be happy. Then our troubles began. 

In the first place, Emillus absolutely refused 
to eat, in water or out. Understanding from our 
one authority that he needed a carnivorous diet, 
we tempted him, day after day, with every va- 
riety of meat brought to our door in the butcher's 
white-hooded cart with Its retinue of hungry dogs, 
but nothing whatever would our boarder touch. 
And in the second place, he was, unlike Diogenes, 
forever scrambling out of his tub and digging 



312 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

himself in at one point or another on the bank. 
Several times a day one or the other of us might 
be seen tugging up Emilius by his cord from the 
bowels of the earth and solicitously dumping him 
down again Into his tub of water, which a shovel- 
ful of mud, shreds of meat and other attractions 
still failed to render homelike. His one object 
in life was to get out of It. 

^*If Emilius would only take a nap !'* I sighed 
One warm afternoon, when I had just rescued him 
from a deep pit of his frenzied digging for the 
third time that day. 

"Read him poetry," advised Joy-of-LIfe. 
Magical snatches of Bliss Carman's deep-sea 
songs ran through my head : — 

"When sheering down to the Line 
Come polar tides from the North, 
Thy silver folk of the brine 
Must glimmer and forth;" 

» « « 4f» « • 

"The myriad fins are moving, 
The marvelous flanges play." 

Chesterton, who chuckled over another gro- 
tesque denizen of the deep, would have felt the 
charm of Emilius : 



EMILIUS 313 

"Dark the sea was, but I saw hira, 

One great head with goggle eyes, 
Like a diabolic cherub 

Flying in those fallen skies. 

"For I saw that finny goblin 

Hidden in the abyss untrod; 

And I knew there can be laughter 

On the secret face of God." 

But it was almost too early for Chesterton, and 
quite too early for the fascinating fish poems of 
Rupert Brooke or for Chauncey Hickox's feeling 
apostrophe to a tortoise : 

"Paludal, glum, with misdirected legs, 
You hide your history as you do your eggs, 
And offer us an osseous nut to crack 
Much harder than the shell upon your back. 
No evolutionist has ever guessed 
Why your cold shoulder is within your chest — 
Why you were discontented with a plan 
The vertebrates accept, from fish to man. 
For what environment did you provide 
By pushing your internal frame outside? 
How came your ribs in this abnormal place? 
Inside your rubber neck you hide your face 
And answer not." 

Besides, I had no ground for hope that Emilius 
would be pleased by my reading of poetry or by 
anything else that I could do for him. He im- 
pressed me as intensely preoccupied, a turtle of a 
fixed idea. 



314 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

I was standing by the tub at sunset, trying to 
ingratiate myself with its sulky occupant, whom 
I had just dragged up from his latest hole in the 
bank, by tickling his flippers with a playful twig, 
when Giant Bluff strode over from his adjacent 
territory and made us a party of three. 

"How^s your snapper?" 

"I don't know. He doesn't tell. But I'm 
afraid he can't be feeling very fit, for he hasn't 
eaten anything since he came, a week ago." 

"Hasn't, though? Huh! Looked out of my 
window at three o'clock last night and saw it graz- 
ing out there at the length of its rope, munch- 
ing grass like any old cow." 

Previous conversations with Giant Bluff had 
impaired our faith in his strict veracity. 

"I thought turtles ate only animal food." 

"If it's fresh and kicking. What you ought to 
do is to catch it a mess of frogs. 'Twould tear 
a live frog to pieces fast enough. But you've 
starved it to grass. That's all right. I raised 
turtles out on the Mojave desert one spell and fed 
'em on nothing but grass. Quite a dainty out 
there. Sold 'em for five dollars apiece. Turned 
over a cool thousand " 



EMILIUS 315 

"Of turtles?" 

*'Of dollars. Easy's winking. This snapper 
of yours wouldn't be bad eating. Might fetch 
five cents a pound in the market." 

I was not exactly fond of Emilius, but I hated 
to hear him discussed as edible pounds. Mov- 
ing away a little, I began to stir lightly with my 
twig the loose earth in his last excavation. Giant 
Bluff was no favorite in our neighborhood, into 
which he had intruded, a stranger from the wild 
west, a year or two before. His little habit of 
sitting on his back steps, Sunday afternoons, with 
a rifle across his knees, and shooting with accu- 
rate aim every cat and hen that trespassed on his 
land was in Itself enough to account for his un- 
popularity. 

The shooting, however, except when a pet 
rooster or tabby was the victim, thrilled the chil- 
dren on the hill with a delicious terror. Only 
that morning I had seen Towhead, crouched be- 
hind a clump of syrlngas, playing sharp-shooter. 

"Here I" he was shouting to Rosycheeks, who 
was approaching very slowly, like a fascinated 
bird. "Hurry up I YouVe got to come walking 
by and be shot." 



3i6 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

"I doesn't want to," sobbed poor little Rosy- 
cheeks, "but I's tomin', — I's tomin'." 

The glory of Giant Bluff, whose boasts were 
as prodigious as his profession was mysterious, 
had recently, however, been tarnished by an open 
discomfiture. One of our oldest and most respect- 
ed citizens, a Yankee in blood and bone, driver 
of a depot carriage, had incurred Giant Bluff's 
deadly displeasure. And this was the way of it. 
In this beginning of our sleepy summertide, when 
the campus was as empty of life as a seigniorial 
park, when the citizens were able to use the side- 
walks and the shopkeepers dozed behind their 
counters, the New York train dropped at our sta- 
tion a sharp-voiced young woman in a flamboyant 
hat. 

Uncle Abram, the only driver to persist in meet- 
ing trains through the long vacation, watched 
from his carriage, with indifferent eyes, her brisk 
approach. 

"Is this a public vehicle?" 

"Think likely." 

"Do you know where Mr. Benjamin Bluff 
lives?" 

"Maybe." 



EMILIUS 317 

"Take me there.'* 

On the way the fare, Giant Bluff's daughter 
by a former marriage, questioned Uncle Abram 
as to her father's business and position in the 
town, but she might as well have tried to wring 
information from Emilius. Arrived at the house, 
she bade her driver inquire for her if Mr. Bluff 
was at home, saying that otherwise she would not 
call. 

Mrs. Bluff, whom Uncle Abram had never met 
before, answered the bell. 

*'Mr. Bluff in?" 

*'No. Why?" 

"Nothin' partic'lar," and Uncle Abram backed 
himself away. 

"Well?" queried his passenger, as he started 
up Daniel Webster with a professional crack of 
the whip. 

"Ain't to hum." 

"Who came to the door?" 

"Lady." 

"What lady?" 

"Dunno." 

"Was it his wife?" 

"Dunno as 'twas his wife." 



3i8 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

His exasperated fare, afterwards tracking 
down her parent in Boston, made use of this in- 
cident for the slander of her stepmother. 

*'A nice impression she makes, to be sure ! Even 
that numskull of a driver doubted whether she 
was your wife or not." 

Giant Bluff came back that eyening breathing 
out threats of slaughter. Before midnight it was 
noised all about our village that he had sworn 
to shoot Uncle Abram on sight. The old driver 
was warned by a group of excited boys who found 
him serenely smoking over a game of checkers 
and were quite unable to interest him in their tid- 
ings. But the next day, when the station plat- 
form was well filled with our business men wait- 
ing for the eight o'clock into town, Uncle Abram 
drove up to the depot and reined in Daniel Web- 
ster just against the spot where Giant Bluff was 
standing, a little aloof for the reason that no- 
body cared to stand with him. 

Taken bv surprise as Uncle Abram coolly 
looked him over. Giant Bluff, unexpectedly to him- 
self, said: 

"Good morning." 

"Ez good a mornin* ez God ever made." 



EMILIUS 319 

Giant Bluff, who prided himself on his atheism, 
began to swagger. 

"That's stuff and nonsense. Only babies and 
fools believe such rubbish nowadays." 

*'Thet so? Ain't no God, eh, and he never 
made no mornin's? Wal! Maybe ye'll put me 
in the way of findin' out about quite a few little 
things like that. I've hearn tell thet ye're goin' 
to shoot me, an' my rheumatiz is so bad this sum- 
mer thet I'd be obleeged if ye'd shoot me right 
now an' hev it over." 

"You — ^you insulted my wife," gasped Giant 
Bluff. 

"Not a nary," protested Uncle Abram, with a 
touch of indignant color in his weather-beaten 
cheeks. "I said I didn't know whether the lady 
thet come to the door was your wife or not, an' 
no more I didn't. I hedn't never seen her afore. 
But even s'posin' thet your morals didn't hurt you 
none, do ye think I'd let it out to a stranger? No, 
siree; I'd a kep my mouth shet, for the credit o' 
the town. An' now thet I've had my say on thet 
little misunderstandin', ye kin shoot me ez soon 
ez ye like." 

The crowded platform roared for joy, the op- 



320 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

portune train came in, and Giant Bluff, the first 
to swing aboard, was not seen in the village again 
for a fortnight. So it came to pass that he was 
but newly acquainted with Emilius. 

As I was aimlessly poking about with my twig 
in the last of those mysterious holes which Emi- 
lius had been so desperately resolved on digging, 
a number of small, round, white objects came to 
view. 

"Why, what are those?" was my imbecile ex- 
clamation, stooping to see them better in the half 
light. Forthwith Giant Bluff was stooping at my 
shoulder. 

*^Eggs, Didn't you ever see turtles' eggs be- 
fore? It beats me what you learned ladies don't 
know." 

I went abruptly in to Joy-of-Life, and there we 
sat in the dusk, overwhelmed with contrition. 
Poor, dear, misunderstood, ill-treated Emilius! 
All he wanted was a chance to get away from the 
water and lay her eggs in some warm, deep cham- 
ber, where he could lie hidden for days, and they 
for weeks, in comfort and security. And how we 
had worried her with our continual upjerkings 
and immersions, how we had kept him digging one 



EMILIUS 321 

forbidden nursery after another, how arrogantly 
we had set ourselves against the unpersuadable 
urge of instinct ! 

Before breakfast the next morning we hurried 
out together to set Emilius free. There was no 
Emilius. The tub stood empty, from the tree 
dangled a bit of cut cord, the loose earth that 
marked the holes had been neatly raked over, 
there were no small, white, round objects to be 
found. Had Emilius gone for good and taken 
his eggs with her? 

As we searched the ground In vain. Giant Bluff 
sauntered out of his back door, smiling an in- 
scrutable smile. 

"Saw that snapper of yours walking off an hour 
since. It went under the back fence out into the 
woods. Reckon you can't catch it, though it was 
traveling rather slow; couldn't hurry much, for 
It had a dozen little turtles trotting along on each 
side. Quite a handsome family!" 

Joy-of-LIfe and I, turning our backs on that 
stupendous liar, stared at each other with horror 
dawning in our eyes. 

Had he ? Would he ? Could he ? 

Emilius! 



HUDSON'S CAT 

"This night our cat ranne crying from one side of the ship 
to the other, looking overboord, which made us to wonder; 
but we saw nothing." 

— Juefs Journal, 
What did you see, O pussy-cat-mew, 
Pet of the Half -Moon's turbulent crew? 
Who taught them mew-tiny? Wasn't it you? 

Juet kept journal of storm and fog 
And the mermaid that set them all agog, 
But what has become of the cat-a-log? 

Henry Hudson, the master sage, 

Writ large his name on history's page, 

But you, you too, were a purr-sonage. 

Shall the tale slight you, whose tail was a-quiver 
As you and Hudson sailed up the river 
Made only his by Time the giver? 

Why did you take to adventuring, 

Puss-illanimous fireside thing? 

What was the cargo you hoped to bring? 

Did you dream of multitudinous mice 
Running about the Isles of Spice 
In a paradoxical Paradise? 

Were you not homesick where monsters swam, 
Dolorous dolphin and clamorous clam, 
For your sunny stoop in Amsterdam? 



Months at sea, while the billows roared, 
And the Milky Way not a cupful poured; 
No wonder Tabby looked over-bored. 

You had your feelin's, as felines go, 
Poor little puss. What scared you" so? 
O stupid sailors that didn't know I 

Was it a dogfish struck the spark 

From your sea-green eyes with the quaint remark 

That you were sailing upon a bark? 

Millions of happy pussies fall 

Into oblivion; still you call 

From the top of your ancient eater-wall, 

Call on the centuries to concur 

In praise of Tabby the Mariner, 

Who discovered the Catskills, named for her. 



CATASTROPHES 

"And when Maeldune and his men went into the best of the 
houses they saw no one in it but a little cat that was in the 
middle of the house, and it playing about on the four stone 
pillars that were there, and leaping from one to another. It 
looked at the men for a short space, but it did not stop from 
its play." — Lady Gregory's Book of Saints and Wonders. 

People are people, and cats are cats. We do 
not know our pussies. We pet them but we can- 
not tame them. Landor^s Cincirollo, 

"wagging his dread jaw at every chirp 
Of bird above him on the olive branch," 

IS latent in Wordsworth^s 

"kitten on the wall 
Sporting with the leaves that fall." 

These charming fireside tenants of ours have 
their own concerns, which lie aloof from the hu- 
man. Even nursery-lore bears witness to this: 

" Tussy-cat, Pussy-cat, 

Where have you been?' 
'I've been to London, 

To see the Queen.' 
Tussy-cat, Pussy-cat, 

What did you there?* 
'I frightened a little mouse 

Under her chair.*" 

324 



CATASTROPHES 325 

But if we cannot forego the consciousness of 
those tiger claws hid in the velvet daintiness of 
the light feet, neither can tabby put her trust in 
us. Race memory and, too often, individual ex- 
perience accuse us. Her reticence with human- 
kind, her stealth, her self-reliance, might well 
have been stamped deep into cat character by the 
monstrous cruelties she has suffered at our hands. 
Her reputed connection with witches, of whom it 
is estimated that Christendom put to death some 
nine million, involved the poor animal in their 
hideous tortures. Indeed, she caught it from all 
sides. Cats were flung into the bonfires to perish 
with the helpless old crones who had cared for 
them. A witch might be exorcised by whipping a 
cat, like the wretched puss long and solemnly 
flogged by twelve priests "in a parlor at Denham, 
til shee vanished out of theyr sight." And it was 
a cat, so confession on the rack declared, that 
after an accursed christening was cast into the sea 
to raise a storm that should drown James of Scot- 
land, "the deviPs worst enemy,'* on his wedding 
journey home from Denmark. This royal witch- 
hunter, who came thirteen years later to the 
throne of England, was not content until thirty 



326 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

human victims had paid by horrible deaths for 
the black art of that storm. 

A few of these maligned cats have left a dis^ 
tinctive record on the blurred page of history. 
Rutterkin, the familiar of Agnes Flower, whose 
very name should have attested her innocence, 
was black as the soot of hell, but Mother Fraun- 
ces, who learned the secrets of sorcery from her 
own grandmother, had *'a whyte spotted cat 
* * * to be her sathan," while the leader of the 
infernal chorus in the cavern scene of Macbeth 
was a tabby: 

"Thrice the brinded cat hath mewed." 

Into Other inoffensive little beasts, "hedge- 
pigs,'* puppies, owls, bats, crows, rabbits, toads, 
the evil spirits were believed to enter, though 
Thomas Heywood notes with satisfaction that no 
imp was ever so sacrilegious as to masquerade as 
dove or lamb; but the cat calumny has lasted 
longest. 

"And shall I be afrayd 
Of Cats in mine own Countrey?" 

Some of us are, for a recent criminal trial in 
one of the Middle States brought out the fact 
that many an American pocket, even to-day, car- 



CATASTROPHES 327 

ries a silver bullet as a talisman against the **black 
hex," or witch-cat. 

Yet from the cruelties of superstition poor puss 
has suffered less than from the cruelties of sport. 
Rustic festivals in Merry England were not com- 
plete without the archery matches whose target 
was a terrified, bleeding cat, hung up in a wicker 
"bottle," while shouts of glee greeted the success- 
ful hits in the whizzing storm of arrows. As a 
special merry-making, a great company of our 
jovial ancestors would set forth on horseback, 
with drum-beating and all manner of hullabaloo,, 
attended by half the population of the town, to 
enjoy themselves at the expense of some ill-fated 
pussy. A barrel, half full of soot, was swung 
from a cross-beam firmly fixed on two high poles. 
Into this barrel she was plunged and under it the 
valiant horsemen rode as gayly as the English ride 
to a fox-hunt even yet, striking it tremendous 
blows with clubs and wooden hammers. If any 
life was left in the bruised and mangled cat, after 
the destruction of the barrel, the man who put 
an end to her by some spectacular novelty of bar- 
barity was the hero of the day. 

How can we expect wise old Grimalkin to for- 



328 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

give us our atrocities? She remembers. Accept- 
ing or rejecting at her pleasure what courtesies 
are offered her, she maintains her own reserves. 
Rare are the recorded instances of her going out 
of her way to serve mankind, to whom she owes 
no debt of gratitude. Yet a legend, attested by 
two portraits of this Good Samaritan, tells that 
when Sir Henry Wyatt, father of the poet, was 
imprisoned in the Tower under Richard III and 
left to perish of starvation, a cat came daily to 
his window-grating, bringing him a pigeon from 
a neighboring dove-cot, which doubtless had its 
own opinion of her charity. No wonder that Sir 
Henry, in his later, honored years under the Tu- 
dors, "would ever make much of cats, as other 
men will of their spaniels or hounds." 

With the best will in the world toward felis 
domestica, I have never been able to miaintain 
fortunate relations with the individuals that have 
come my way. Colleagues of mine have reared 
kittens that have become the pride and joy of 
their hearths, as yellow Leo, who passed from 
the happiest of homes into a lyric shrine ; but my 
own cats make a sorry parade down the avenue 
of memory. At the far, dim end of the avenue 



CATASTROPHES 329 

glints out a chubby child in a calico-caped sun- 
bonnet, laboriously trundling in her doll-carriage 
five blind kittens, with the benevolent intent of 
giving them a pleasant airing. The little copper- 
toed shoes bump on the rocks and are caught in 
the brambles of that rough pasture, while at every 
jolt that sprawl of kittenhood overflowing the 
small red chariot miauls so dolorously that their 
benefactor is sorely tempted to sit down and cry 
with them. But amazement at their lack of ap- 
preciation is less than resentment at the conduct 
of their grim, gray mother, Old Spotnose, who 
comes tearing after in fierce pursuit and over- 
takes the rocking vehicle, whence she snatches one 
of the wailing passengers by the scruff of its neck 
and races back with her dangling burden to the 
woodshed. Determined to make the remaining 
kittens happy, the child goes tugging and panting 
on, but still there is heard that dreaded rush in 
the rear, and another, another, another and yet 
another of those squallerkins is kidnapped. Noth- 
ing is left at last but an empty doll-carriage, over- 
turned among the daisies and, deep within the 
sunbonnet, a puckered, crimson face flowing with 
tears. 



330 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

Throughout my childhood Old Spotnose con- 
tinued to be an unsocial and ungracious being. 
Perhaps annoyed by our persistent attentions to 
her frequent families in the woodshed, she sought 
out all manner of hiding-places from haymow 
to cellar. Memorable is the Sunday morning 
when our mother lifted down the hatbox from her 
upper closet shelf and looked in, her Sabbath ex- 
pression completely destroyed, to find a huddle 
of new kittens reposing in the crown of her best 
bonnet. The sudden disappearances of these suc- 
cessive kitten groups were to my slowly dawning 
apprehension first a mystery and then a horror. 
Old Spotnose finally took to the woods, return- 
ing to the kitchen door for food, a gaunt, 'half- 
savage creature, only under stress of icebound 
weather. When we moved away from the vil- 
lage, she could not be found, but one of my broth- 
ers, back for a visit the following summer, heard 
that she had been seen skulking about the house 
and that kindly neighbors had thrown meat and 
fish in her way. Carrying a basin of milk, he 
went to a break in the barn foundations and, lying 
flat on the ground, called and coaxed. Relenting 
toward humankind at the last, sick Old Spotnose, 



CATASTROPHES 331 

hardly more than skin and bone, crawled out to 
him. She would not taste the milk, but she lay 
against his knee for a while, accepting his 
caresses; then dragged herself back under the 
barn to die alone. 

From that time to this, all my personal rela- 
tions with cats have ended in grief. One engaging 
kitten after another grew into romantic or ad- 
venturous youth only to meet disaster. Perhaps 
our most heart-rending experience was with Trip- 
tolemus, taken from his mother in such tender in- 
fancy that we could not teach him to lap milk 
or even suck it from the finger. Finally he solved 
the problem himself by tumbling into the saucer 
and, when he was lifted out, licking his feet with 
relish. For days he insisted on the saucer prom- 
enade, taking nourishment only by applying his 
wayward little tongue to each foot in turn. From 
a roly-poly innocent, wondering at the world out 
of the roundest of blue eyes, he grew, with the 
astonishing speed of kittenhood, into a profligate 
young ruffian, limping home from one disreputa- 
ble fight after another with torn ears and gashed 
neck and thighs. One wound deepened into a fes- 
tering, offensive sore, beyond the cure of our do- 



332 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

mestic surgery, and as veterinaries and animal 
hospitals were then foreign to our experience, a 
hrother, in my absence, was bidden take the cat 
down to the river and drown him. Very slowly 
the executioner, a stout bag in his hand, made his 
ivay to the water's edge. Trip careering about his 
feet and playing with the fatal string. The bag 
was weighted with stones and the cat was ordered 
to enter the open mouth. Trip sniffed at it sus- 
piciously, did not like the game, but looked up 
trustfully into the familiar face and obeyed. The 
hoy who flung that bag out Into the current and 
came running home as If nine reproachful little 
ghosts were at his heels could never be brought 
to drown a cat again. 

Later on, there was a graceful mite, Argon, 
whom I can still see jumping after moths in the 
moonhght; but before the moth-season was over, 
there came a night whose darkness never rendered 
him up. Strayed or stolen, killed, chased, en- 
chanted, it was not for us to know. 

Years after, our home rejoiced for a few brief 
weeks In the charms of Frisky Fuzzy, a peculiarly 
affectionate, confiding kitty, who met a cruel 
death by the teeth of the rector's terrier. This 



CATASTROPHES 333 

young priest was a holy man in general, but he 
had no regard for the sixth commandment as 
broken by his dog. All the neighborhood was 
aroused, for one beloved puss after another had 
been left torn and bleeding by that hypocritical 
little brute, who always kept an eye out for fresh 
victims as he trotted sedately at his master's 
heels, making pastoral calls. When at last ven- 
geance found him out and the dog lay poisoned 
on the parsonage steps, the rector's grief was 
so sincere that my anger melted in sympathy. 
There had been a coolness between us since 
Frisky Fuzzy's fate, but on the next occasion 
when we met at a neutral tea-table, I attempted 
a reconciliation. 

^'Perhaps your dog and my cat have made up 
our quarrel in heaven," I began, passing him the 
sugar. 

*'I don't believe your cat went to heaven," he 
retorted, passing me the lemon. 

Our last attempt at a home kitten was with a 
little sprite of so perverse and irreverent a tem- 
per that the most liberal theology could hardly 
hold out to us the hope of finding her again in 
any Paradise where pious pussies congregate. 



334 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 



1 



This impish being was foisted upon us by an old 
friend whose persuasive powers, as I had long 
known, were irresistible. In tones that were dul- 
cet even by way of the telephone she invited me 
to shelter her wild young puss, Polly, during the 
summer, while she closed her own house and, 
bearing Billy in a basket, sought the repose of an 
ocean isle. 

"Why don't you carry Polly with you, too?" 

"There isn't room in the basket and, besides, 
I'm sure that two cats would be against the rules 
of the railroad." 

"But Polly takes to the trees whenever I try 
to pat her. She would run away." 

"Oh, I can arrange that for you very nicely. 
I'll let you have a kitten of hers and then she'll 
be perfectly contented." 

"A kitten of Polly's! She is only a kitten her^ 
self." 

"Yes, you are quite right, as usual. One kitten 
might not be enough to steady her. It would be 
better for you to have two, and then Polly will 
be kept busy in teaching them to play together." 

"Now how many catkins have you over there? 
Own up." 



CATASTROPHES 335 

**WellI Not counting the pincushion pussy 
that the mice like to nibble, we have six on hand 
just now, — Billy and Polly and the four kits. 
Such darlings! Everybody wants them. The 
competition is really terrible, but of course I in- 
sist that you shall have first choice. Come over 
this afternoon, please. We are taking the early 
train to-morrow morning." 

Spellbound by the cheerful audacity of these 
proposals, I went, and when, after much active 
exertion on our part, Polly had been caught and 
securely hasped down under a heaving basket-lid, 
I dubiously selected two of her blind babes to bear 
her company. 

"Who takes the other two?'' 

*'You do," responded my friend more win- 
somely than ever, ^'unless you want to be a horrid 
Herod and go down in history as another slayer 
of the innocents. Look at those little dears I Lis- 
ten to them I Have you the heart to ask me to 
drop them into a pail of cold, cold water? What 
sort of a physiologist are you to suppose that kit- 
tens, born only yesterday, could live without their 
mother? And Polly would miss them dreadfully. 
I never saw a more devoted family. As soon as 



336 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

they are old enough to gambol, they will be such 
a pleasure for you all, — especially your sister. 
And you can easily find nice homes for them, if 
you want to give them away later on." 

The four members of our summer household 
each had the privilege of naming one of the kit- 
tens. Housewife Honeyvoice called the black one 
Topsy; the small schoolgirl, Esther, dubbed the 
prettiest Daisy; I gave to the homeliest the en- 
couraging appellation of Cinderella, and Sister 
Jane, returning from a visit to find the feline fam- 
ily in possession, promptly branded the fourth as 
Beelzebub. Out of deference to her outraged 
feelings, a nursery was prepared down cellar, 
where Polly, for so inexperienced a parent, took 
excellent care of her babies except when my offi- 
cious ignorance interfered. 

Still a blunderer, I put the kittens out on the 
south piazza the second day to treat them to a 
bracing interlude of air and sunshine. Polly at 
once went frantic, mewing and scratching for re- 
admittance. Presently a succession of queer, soft 
thumps brought me to the scene, and there was 
Polly, Beelzebub flapping from her mouth, climb- 
ing madly up the outside of the screen door. As 



CATASTROPHES 337 

soon as she saw me, she parted her jaws to emit 
another of those shrill meows that had been pro- 
faning the peace of the house and down fell poor 
Belze with a piteous whack on the piazza floor. 

Close scrutiny of the situation revealed a big, 
saffron-colored cat, with a dangerous glint in his 
green eyes, peering from the shrubbery and, self- 
rebuked, I restored Polly and her jewels to the 
safe seclusion of the cellar. 

But I still held to my faith in the open air and, 
as soon as the kittens began to blink, Housewife 
Honeyvoice and I pulled out from the lumber that 
chokes UP cellars under feminine charge the big 
wire box which had been the Castle Joyous of 
Robin Hood. Planted firmly on the grassplot 
outside the cellar door, with a cat-hole just large 
enough for Polly cut in the wire. It was so secure 
as to appease even her maternal fears. Every 
morning she marshaled her little troop out to this 
new abode, carefully drove them all in and tended 
them there until sunset, when she led them back to 
the cellar. All the cats in the vicinity came to call, 
but Polly was the very spirit of Inhospitality. She 
always maintained an anxious guard against ma- 
rauders and, at the approach of the most amiable 



338 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

old gossip, would fill up the wire doorway with 
her own slender body, spitting and bristling in the 
very face of the disconcerted guest. Cinderella, 
the most precocious of the kittens, observed with 
admiration this form of welcome and scandalized 
all observers by scampering to the door one day, 
as her mother was returning from a brief consti- 
tutional, and with all due ceremonies of defiance 
refusing her admission. After one astonished 
instant, Polly recovered her presence of mind, 
bowled out of the way that comical ball of im- 
pudence and made it her first parental duty, after 
entering, to box Cinder's ears. 

As the kittens grew older, they had the run of 
the house, which they filled with elfin mirth of 
motion and reels of Puckish revel. Placed in a 
row on my desk, they would watch the moving 
pen with fascinated eyes, till one shy paw after 
another would steal out to investigate and pres- 
ently there would be a flurry of funny antics all 
over a blotted page. By autumn they had all gone 
their ways to different households, except Esther's 
Daisy, whom we kept, but the joy of kittenhood 
was the only life they had. Doom, like a black 
cat hunting mice, speedily caught them all, un- 



CATASTROPHES 339 

less, perchance, dogs and motors were kinder than 
we fear to Cinder, who, one winter day, after her 
morning saucer of milk, struck blithely out into 
the sunshine from the best of homes and never, 
though search, inquiry and advertisement did their 
utmost, was heard of again. Little Bub proved 
so puny that he was left with Polly, reinstated, 
much to her content, in her own kingdom, but not 
even her puzzled solicitude, varied by cuffings, 
could keep him alive. As for Topsy and Daisy, 
I have not the heart to tell how they perished, but 
though I say it as should not, Daisy was too bad 
for this world. An incarnate imp, she mocked all 
discipline and scorned all affection, capering into 
new mischief at every rebuke and scratching her- 
self free from caresses. Despising laps and cush- 
ions, she took to the air like an aeroplane, forever 
on the leap from one forbidden shelf, mantel or 
flower-pot to another. Her agility was supernat- 
ural. She would hang from a curtain cord, spring 
thence to the top of a door, pounce on a bowing 
caller's back, and within ten seconds fill the hall 
with such skurry and commotion that Hecate and 
all her witches could have done no more. She 
could not keep quiet, even at night, until House- 



340 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

wife Honeyvoice devised the plan of putting her 
to bed in a basket, with a cork dangling from the 
handle for her to play with in her dreams. 

Joy-of-Life was ill that winter and, because the 
kitten's pranks would now and then divert a suf- 
fering hour, we bore with Daisy as long as pa- 
tience could, until, indeed, she forsook the house 
and set up an independent establishment with a 
battered ruffian of a cat under our south porch. 
Before forsaking the house, she had derided 
everything in it. She had, indeed, an uncanny gift 
of singling out for her most profane attentions the 
special obiects that humankind holds sacred. On 
the top of my desk stands a small Florentine bust 
of Dante, whose austere countenance she loved to 
slap. Beyond it hangs a cross of inlaid olive- 
wood from Jerusalem, apparently inaccessible, but 
this infant athlete, precariously balancing with one 
foot on the curved woodwork of the desk and two 
feet clawing the wall, would stretch herself out 
like an elastic until her free foot could give the 
lower tip of the cross a smart rap and set it swing- 
ing. Punished, she would strike back, hitting us 
in the face with an absurd, soft paw; called, she 
would run away ; caught, she would kick and bite. 



CATASTROPHES 341 

Our most tactful cajolery she met with suspicion 
and disdain, if not with open ridicule. Graceful 
as a whirling leaf, she was untamable as the wind 
that whirls it, — ^^the wildest wisp of kittenhood 
that ever left an aching memory. 

Since the tragic exit of Daisy, whose confidence 
I could never win, — and her cynical little ghost 
bids me admit that her distrust was borne out by 
the event, — I have counted myself unworthy to 
take any kitten to hearth and home. I doubt if 
any would come. My neighbors across the way 
have a lordly old Thomas, who, smelling dog on 
my skirts, spits at me as I mount the steps. My 
neighbors of the cross-cut have a glossy black puss 
in a resplendent red collar, who politely but un- 
relentingly evades all my advances. The feline 
heart has found me out. Yet I still cherish a wist- 
ful regard for these delicate-footed, wary crea- 
tures, who develop so suddenly from madcap 
frolic Into dignity, discretion and reserve, keeping 
even in the most domestic surroundings a latent 
sense of a free life elder than civilization, when, 
as Swinburne tells his silken crony: 

"Wild on woodland ways your sires 
Flashed like fires." 



342 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

A friend of mine, a scholar, and therefore 
proud In thought and poor in purse, living at the 
top of a London apartment house, had a cherished 
cat by name of Fettles, who never touched the 
ground from September to June. Rooms and cor- 
ridor limited his promenades, except for a long 
box of plants that filled the diminutive balcony. 
To the casual eye he seemed well content with his 
cloistered life, purring on cozy cushions, perform- 
ing painstaking toilets, cuddling down on the table 
close to the arm of his mistress as she read and 
wrote, even condescending, for her pleasure, to 
play with a tassel or ball, but I noted that my ar- 
rivals brought to Fettles a quivering excitement. 
It was not my conversation, which he ignored, nor 
my gifts, for after his first scandalous orgy on 
American catnip I was forbidden to bring him 
anything more tempting than a chocolate mouse. 
It was my boots, especially if I had been walking 
across Regent Park and brought in honest earth 
Instead of pavement scraps and taxi smells. Fet- 
tles would rush to my feet and sniff at sole and 
heel and toe, arching his back and lashing his tail 
when the odors brought him peculiarly thrilling 
tidings of the strange world so far below his bal-. 



CATASTROPHES 343 

cony. In the summer he was the guest of a Dev- 
onshire cottage, but for the first week or two he 
would be frightened by the vastness and queerness 
of out-of-doors. He would crouch for hours on 
the threshold, looking out with mingled ecstasy 
and terror on the garden, now and then reaching 
down a dubious paw to touch the warm brown 
earth. By degrees he could be coaxed to join his 
mistress at afternoon tea under the plum trees, 
cautiously placing himself in touch of the hem of 
her gown. The summer would be half over be- 
fore he was at ease in his brief Paradise. 

Fettles, by the way, was succeeded by Thomas 
Heywood, and Tommy Heywood by Sisi, the only 
Londoner I know who enjoyed the air-raids. 
Whenever a Zeppelin alarm scared the lodgers 
out of their "honey-heavy dew of slumber," Sisi 
had the sport of his life. Knowing that his mis- 
tress, even if a bomb were crashing through her 
ceiling, would not abandon him, he would dash 
hither and yon in a rapture of disobedience, now 
under the bed, now behind a bookcase, continually 
evading her frenzied clutches. Slippered feet 
went skurrying past the door, but still Sisi sprang 
and scampered, even wheeling about in giddy cir- 



344 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

cles as if this were the chance of chances for a 
kitten to catch its tail. My friend, with Sisi 
clasped to her panting breast, was invariably the 
last lodger to reach the refuge of the cellar. 

The cats of legend are not as many as one 
would suppose, or perhaps the fault is still mine. 
Even here they evade me. I can call but few to 
mind, Puss in Boots, Sir Tybalt in the animal epic 
of Reynard the Fox, the Kilkenny cats of tragic 
fame, the grinning Cheshire cat — for whose like 
I vainly looked in Cheshire — the mysterious 
Knurremurre of Norway, and the far-fabled 
*'King of the Cats." English chronicles, none too 
authentic, tell of a busy mouser that made Dick 
Whittington mayor of London, and of a faithful 
puss who ventured down a chimney of The Tower 
to cheer her imprisoned master, the Earl of 
Southampton, by a call. More worthy of credit 
is John Locke's account, preserved by Hakluyt, 
of an honorable incident in his voyage to Jeru- 
salem, undertaken in the spring of 1553. The 
pilgrim ship was about fifty miles from Jaffa, when 
it ''chanced by fortune that the Shippes Cat lept 
into the Sea, which being downe, kept her selfe 
very valiauntly above water, notwithstanding the 



CATASTROPHES 34S 

great waves, still swimming, the which the mas- 
ter knowing, he caused the Skiffe with halfe a 
dosen men to goe towards her and fetch her 
againe, when she was almost halfe a mile from 
the shippe, and all this while the ship lay on staies. 
J hardly beleeve they would have made such haste 
and meanes if one of the company had been in 
the like perill. They made the more haste be- 
cause it was the patrons cat. This I have written 
onely to note the estimation that cats are in, 
among the Italians, for generally they esteeme 
their cattes, as in England we esteeme a good 
Spaniell." 

Petrarch and Tasso are eminent witnesses to 
the Italian fondness for cats. The French, too, 
have long been famed as cat lovers; Montaigne, 
Chateaubriand, Gautier, Pierre Loti, Jules Le- 
maitre, Baudelaire, La Fontaine, Champfleury, 
Michelet have all written charmingly of the Fire- 
side Sphinx, leaving it to a Belgian poet, Maeter- 
linck, to present poor pussy as a stage villain. 
English literature takes less account of her^ though 
Chaucer keenly expresses the friar's choice of a 
comfortable seat by telling how 

"fro the bench he droof awey the cat," 



346 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

and Skelton has poured Invective on the slayer of 
Philip Sparow, calling down vengeance 

"On all the hole nacyon 
Of cattes wilde and tame; 
God send them sorowe and shame!" 

No reader of Tudor drama needs to be remind- 
ed of Gammer Gurton's Gyb, crouching in the 
fireplace, where her eyes, mistaken for sparks of 
fire, refused to be blown out. Shakespeare^s fre- 
quent references to the "harmless, necessary cat'* 
are as accurate as they are nonchalant, but Mil- 
ton does not mention her in his account of the cre- 
ation, although she would certainly have been 
more comforting to Eve, at least, than "Behe- 
moth, biggest born of earth," or "the parsimoni- 
ous emmet." Indeed, an Arabic story of the crea- 
tion claims that the dog and cat were allowed to 
accompany Adam and Eve, for their protection 
and solace, into the waste beyond the flaming 
sword. Herrick's "green-eyed kitling;" Wal- 
pole's Selima of 

"The fair round face, the snowy beard. 
The velvet of her paws, 
Her coat that with the tortoise vies, 
Her ears of jet and emerald eyes," 



CATASTROPHES 347 

— charms all forfeit to her longing for stolen 
goldfish; Arnold's Atossa 

— "So Tiberius might have sat, 
Had Tiberius been a cat," — 

have made their way Into poetry, but prose, espe- 
cially the familiar prose of letters, has kept green 
the memory of many a pussy more. We love Dr. 
Johnson the better for his consideration of Hodge 
"for whom,'* reports Boswell, '*he himself used 
to go out and buy oysters, lest the servants, hav- 
ing that trouble, should take a dIsHke to the poor 
creature." Of course the tender-hearted Cowper 
cared for cats, and even the industrious Southey 
would turn his epic-blunted quill to accounts of 
Rumpelstilzchen and Hurlyburlybuss, — sonorous 
cat-names closely pressed upon by Mark Twain's 
Sour Mash, Apolllnaris, Zoroaster and Blather- 
skite, while Canon LIddon's Tweedledum and 
Tweedledee of Amen Corner are not far behind. 
No portrait of a cat in English verse Is more 
vivid than that given in the sestette of Mrs. Mar- 
riott Watson's oft-praised sonnet: 

*'Sphinx of my quiet hearth! who deign'st to dwell 
Friend of my toil, companion of mine ease, 
Thine is the lore of Ra and Rameses; 
That men forget dost thou remember well, 
Beholden still in blinking reveries, 
With somber, sea-green gaze inscrutable." 



348 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

It Is pleasant to think that the race memory 
of puss goes farther back in time and farther east 
in geography than the witchcraft cruelties of 
Christendom. The Mohammedan faith has been 
kinder to her than ours. Persia has ever held her 
in affection. Mahomet cut off the flowing edge 
of his sleeve rather than disturb Muezza's nap. 
But most of all her inherent aristocracy springs 
from those shining centuries by the Nile, when 
under the protection of the moon-eyed goddess 
Pasht she was honored in life and embalmed in 
death. The supreme Ra, the Sun God, was ad- 
dressed as "the Great Cat,'' and The Book of the 
Dead holds the mystic text: "I have heard the 
mighty word which the Ass spake unto the Cat in 
the House of Hapt-re.'* 



TO HAMLET, A COLLIE 

Strange dog, with terror planted in your heart, 

At your dim root of life a piteous dread 

Foreboding evil doom, a panic bred 

Of some fierce shock to puppy nerves! No art 

Home kindness can devise prevents your start, 

Wild stare and panting breath at each new tread; 

Your anxious eyes keep watch, uncomforted 

By our poor love, too weak to take your part 

Against that fatal menace which, for us 

No less than you, lurks in the coming springs. 

Of all our creeds and dreams Incredulous, 

Thrilled by these sudden agonies, you quake 

Through all your lithe young body. What should make 

A collie know the grief of mortal things? 



HAMLET AND POLONIUS 

"There's something in his soul 
O'er which his melancholy sits on brood." 

— Shakespeare's Hamlet. 

It was a beautiful morning, whose beauty could 
only hurt, of the first June since Joy-of-Life went 
away. All green paths were desolate for lack of 
her glad step. And the stately kennel that had 
been known from the first as *'Sigurd's House" 
stood silent, its green door closed on bare floor 
and cobwebbed walls. Stray cats passed It un- 
concerned and hoptoads took their ease on the 
edges of ^'Sigurd's Drinklng-cup" hollowed out in 
the adjacent rock. In an hour when the pain of 
living seemed wellnigh unbearable, the Angel of 
Healing called me up by telephone. His voice 
was gruff, but kindly. 

"Say, you miss that old dog of yours a sight, 
don't you?" 

I could feel the confidential pressure of Sigurd's 
golden head against my knee as I briefly assented, 

350 



HAMLET AND POLONIUS 351 

recognizing the speaker as the proprietor of cer- 
tain collie kennels not far distant. 

"He had a right good home, that dog had, and 
you must have got pretty well used to collie ways.'' 

"If you were going to ask me to buy another 
collie, please don't. Sigurd Is my dog — forever." 

"Well I Since you put It that way — ^but I'm at 
my wit's end to get rid of a collie pup — a pretty 
little fellow, rough Scotch, sable and white, like 
yours — ^that's scairt at his own shadow." 

"What scared him?" 

"Blest If I know! His sire, Commander, and 
his dam, Whisper, are as nice, normal, easy-tem- 
pered dogs as you could find anywhere, and their 
litters take after 'em — 'cept this youngster, who 
sulks all day long off In some dark hole by him- 
self and shakes If we speak to him. Nobody has 
mishandled the little chap so far's I've ever seen 
or heard, but the least thing — a shout or a rattle 
of tools or any fool noise — throws him into such 
a funk that all the rest of the puppies are getting 
panicky and the whole caboodle is running wild. 
There's no two ways about It. I've got to clear 
that born ninny out. I sold him a month ago to a 
lady for fifty dollars, but she brought lilni back 



352 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

In a week and said he was about as cheerful com- 
pany as a tombstone. Now see here! You can 
have him for twenty, or for nothing, just as you 
feel after you've given him a try." 

*'But I don't want him. I shouldn't want him 
if he were the best dog in the country." 

"Then I reckon I'll have to shoot him. I could 
give him away, but he's such a wretched, shivery 
little rascal that most any sort of folks would be 
too rough for him. 'Twould be kinder to put 
him out of the world and done with it. He's had 
seven months of it now and pretty well made up 
his mind that he don't like it. I did think maybe 
you might be willing to give him a chance." 

I was surprised to hear my own voice saying 
into the telephone : "I'll try him for a few days, 
If you care to bring him over." 

Yet I dreaded his coming. The friend who 
gave us Sigurd had offered us the past winter a 
very prince of puppies, the daintiest, most spirited, 
most winsome little collie that a free affection 
could ask, but Joy-of-LIfe and I could not make 
him ours. We could regard him only as a visitor 
In Sigurd's haunts, and the Lady of Cedar Hill, 
resenting the name of Guest which we had given 



HAMLET AND POLONIUS 353 

him, re-named him Eric and took him to her own 
home. Here she soon won the utter devotion of 
his dog-heart, which, though now no longer beat- 
ing, through that ardent and faithful love ^'tastes 
of immortality." 

I was in the veranda off the study, trying to 
busy myself with my old toys of books and pen 
and paper, when the young collie was led in by a 
small girl, the only person at the kennels whose 
call he obeyed or whose companionship he wel- 
comed. Deposited beside my chair, he promptly 
retreated to the utmost distance the narrow limits 
of his prison-house allowed, panting and quaking. 

"Be good, Blazey," the child admonished him, 
stroking his head with a sunburned hand from 
whose light caress he at once shuddered away. 
"I'll come to see you by and by." 

"By and by is easily said," the puppy made an- 
swer with incredulous eyes that first watched her 
out of sight and then rolled in anguish of despair 
from the wire screening of the porch to roof and 
wall. 

"Is your name Blazey?" I asked him gently, 
but his fit of ague only grew worse as he turned 
his ghastly stare on me 



354 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

"with a look so piteous in purport 
As if he had been loosed out of hell 
To speak of horrors." 

"I made further efforts at conversation while 
the day wore on, but that little yellow Image of 
throbbing terror, upright In the remotest corner, 
would not even turn Its head toward my voice. In 
vain I remonstrated: 

"Alas, how is't with you, 
That you do bend your eye on vacancy 
And with the incorporal air do hold discourse? 
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep." 

The constant tremble of the poor, scared, piti- 
ful puppy was Intensified by every train whistle 
and motor horn to a violent shaking. I could not 
flutter a leaf nor drop a pencil without causing a 
nervous twitch of the brown ears. Suddenly the 
crack of an early Fourth of July torpedo electri- 
fied him into a frenzy of fright. If It had been 
the fatal shot In reserve for Blazey he could not 
have made a madder leap nor wheeled about In 
more distracted circles. In one of these lunatic 
reels he struck against me and, gathering him 
close, I crooned such comfort as I had Into that 
dizzy, quivering, pathetic face; but he tore him- 
self loose and fled gasping back to his corner be- 



HAMLET AND POLONIUS 355 

seeching a perilous and cruel universe to let him 
alone. I, for one, declined: 

"Angels and ministers of grace, defend us! — 
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd, 
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell, 
Be thy intents wicked or charitable, 
Thou comest in such a questionable shape 
That I will speak to thee; I'll call thee Hamlet." 

The puppy accepted his new name, as he accept- 
ed his dinner, with lugubrious resignation and the 
air of saying to himself : 

"Heaven hath pleas'd it so, 
To punish me with this, and this with me." 

His misery was more appealing than a thousand 
funny gambols could have been, and the house- 
hold, those of us who were left, conspired in vari- 
ous friendly devices to make him feel at home. 
The child at the kennels had taught him one sole 
accomplishment, that of giving his paw, and Sis- 
ter Jane, in a fine spirit of sacrifice, made a point 
of shaking hands with him long and politely at 
least a dozen times a day, rushing to a faucet as 
soon as this hospitable rite was accomplished for 
a fierce scouring of her own polluted palms. 
Housewife Honeyvoice tempted his appetite with 
the most savory of puppy menus and kept up such 
a flow of tuneful comment while he ate that, even 



356 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

in his days of deepest gloom, he rarely failed to 
polish his dish and then thump it all about in an 
unscientific effort to extract gravy from tinware. 
Esther^s arms were now as strong as her feet were 
lively and, after the first week or so, he would 
let her pick him up like a baby and carry him 
about and would even be surprised, at times, into 
a game of romps. He needed play as much as he 
needed food, but he was curiously awkward at it, 
not merely with the usual charming clumsiness of 
puppies but with a blundering uncertainty in all 
his movements, miscalculating his jumps, lighting 
in a sprawling heap and often hurting himself 
by a lop-sided tumble. 

Yet apart from these brief lapses he maintained 
his pose of hopeless melancholy, varied by frantic 
perturbations, until his new name fitted him like 
his new collar. 

"How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable 
Seem to me all the uses of this world!" 

He was not, to be sure, 

"The glass of fashion and the mold of form," 

for his nose, from the bench point of view, was 
nearly half an inch too long. But his "dejected 
haviour" and deep-rooted suspicion of his sur- 



HAMLET AND POLONIUS 357 

roundlngs were Hamlet's own. He felt himself 
"be-netted round with villanles" and apprehen- 
sively watched the simple ways of our family in 
profound despondency and distrust. The fears 
that haunted him kept him so hushed that we grew 
to believe he was actually dumb, — a defect in phys- 
ical endowment that might account for many ab- 
normalities. Now and then the rigid little figure 
beside me on the veranda — for gradually, day by 
day, he edged an inch or two nearer — would give 
a stir of weariness or even drop, exhausted, for 
a nap, but in the main 

"as patient as the female dove 
When that her golden couplets are disclos'd, 
His silence" would "sit drooping." 

Through all the hot summer days I had to see 
him, 

"A dull and muddy mettled rascal, peak 
Like John-a-dreams," 

but as soon as we reached the cool cover of dusk, 
I would lift the now crouching, anxious puppy to 
his four feet and snap on his new leash. 

His troubled eyes would well over with expos- 
tulatory questions: 

"Say, why is this? wherefore? what should we do?" 

"WeVe going to walk. Little Stick-in-the-Mud. 
Come on I'* 



358 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

And thus Hamlet, "with much forcing of his 
disposition," would undergo the daily constitu- 
tional, which he converted into a genuine gym- 
nastic exercise for us both by pulling back on the 
leash with all his considerable strength, protest- 
ing: 

**It is not, nor it cannot come to good; 
But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue.** 

In this ignoble fashion I would drag him along 
for a mile or so of the least frequented road, until 
he would suddenly ^x his slender legs and refuse 
to be budged: 

"Where wilt thou lead me? speak; 
I'll go no further." 

"Very well ! If you insist on turning back here, 
you know what will happen. It will be your turn 
to drag me." 

To this he had always the same rejoinder: 

" 'Tis true 'tis pity, 
And pity *tis 'tis true." 

So Hamlet, all his soul set on getting back to 
the comparative security of that veranda, would 
fall to tugging like an Infant Hercules, scrabbling 
me along, regardless of sidewalks, by the nearest 
route to safety, till I felt myself, on reaching 
home, more than ever a "quintessence of dust." 



HAMLET AND POLONIUS 359 

When I tried him off the leash, he would, even 
into the autumn, run back to the kennels, though 
he would let no one there touch him but the 
gypsy-tanned child. Later, he would slip back to 
the Scarab, usually after dark, but be afraid to 
come near or ask admittance, sweeping around the 
house in wide, wistful circles. It took our softest 
coaxings to bring that palpitating puppy across the 
threshold and, once in, we all had to shake paws 
with him many times before he would believe him- 
self welcome and sink down at my feet to sleep 
away his tiredness and terror. It was midsum- 
mer before I dared loose him on the campus for 
a free scamper, from which, hesitant, with many 
tremors and recoils, he came back to me in an- 
swer to my call. I thought then that the battle 
was won, but the next time I ventured it, and the 
next, he ran away. Yet before the leaves fell we 
had made such progress that when I fastened on 
his leash and invited him to go to walk, 

"there did seem in him a kind of joy 
To hear of it." 

For weeks the rooms of the house were to this 
kennel-bred puppy no better than torture-cham- 
bers, being full of strange, sinister objects, for to 



36o SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

Hamlet, even yet, the unknown is a menace and 
a dread. Brought into study or dining-room, he 
would "wax desperate with imagination," throw- 
ing wild looks at ceiling and walls and then spin- 
ning about and about like an agonized top. 
"Upon the heat and flame" of those excitements 
it was hard to persuade him to "sprinkle cool pa- 
tience," but in process of time he became accus- 
tomed to rugs and furniture and even, after re- 
peated assurances, grew to understand that Sig- 
urd's chair was at his service. 

By mid-winter he had come to realize, with 
a touching relief and responsive fervor of affec- 
tion, that the members of the family were his 
friends, but he was still thrown into a panic by 
the door-bell and the murderous monsters whose 
entrance he believed it to announce. Every ar- 
rival he regarded as an agent of Hamlet's doom 
and fled precipitately to chosen places of conceal- 
ment on the upper floors. Yet curiosity was 
strong in the little fellow, too. As I sat chatting 
with a caller, I would presently be aware of an 
excessively unobtrusive collie stealing down the 
stairs. Quivering all over, in awe of his own 
daring, he would place himself erect on the thresK- 



HAMLET AND POLONIUS 361 

old with his face to the hall and very slowly, 
inch by Inch, would "like a crab" back into the 
room, edging along on his haunches, steering his 
blind course for the further side of my chair. 
Still keeping his back to the stranger, he would 
reach up a pleading paw for me to clasp and 
then, regarding himself as both invisible and pro- 
tected, listen keenly to learn if the conversation 
were by any chance about Hamlet. 

He was as timorous out of doors as in, having 
little to do with other dogs, save with a benignant 
collie neighbor, old Betty, and yielding up his 
choicest bones without remonstrance to any im- 
pudent marauder. If I reproached him for his 
pacifist bearing, he would touch my hand with an 
apologetic tongue and look up with shamefaced 
eyes that admitted: 

"it cannot be 
But I am pigeon-liver'd, and lack gall 
To make oppression bitter." 

It was his habit to take legs, rather than arms, 
"against a sea of troubles," and when enemies 
loomed on the horizon he would precipitately 
make for home. He was by this time dog enough 
to be overjoyed if one of us summoned him for a 
walk. 

"What noise? who calls on Hamlet?" 



362 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

And all his belated frolic of puppyhood came out 
In impatient collie capers while, with our intolera- 
ble human tardiness, wraps were donned and 
doors thrown open. And then the leaps of 

ecstasy I 

*'Go on; I'll follow thee." 

But he hated, and still hates, to be out in the 
great, dangerous world of noises, people, motors, 
alone by daylight. "Nay, come, let's go to- 
gether," is his constant plea. But if no one of 
the household is at liberty to companion him, he 
prefers to wait for his exercise till "the very 
witching time of night," when he plunges into 
the mystery of the woods or runs by moonlight 
along deserted roads. During his first winter, on 
returning from one of his nocturnal rambles, he 
would stand, snow-coated, without a whine or 
scratch, shivering at the outside door, silent even 
under the beating of an icy storm, until some 
anxious watcher caught sight of him and let him 
in. He had been with us over a year before he 
found his voice. Then, one noon, a brisk step 
coming up to the south porch along our private 
path took Hamlet by surprise. His quick, shrill 
protest astonished him as much as it did us and 



HAMLET AND POLONIUS 363 

he promptly rushed to refuge under the table. 
But having shattered our psychopathic theories 
and confessed that he was no mute, he took to 
barking with immoderate enthusiasm that has al- 
ready more than made up for lost time. Yet as 
with his movements, so his barking is odd, — dis- 
cordant, off the pitch, "jangled out of tune.'' 

These tremendous bouts of barking, combined 
with his excitable and suspicious temperament, 
have given our timid collie a preposterous repu- 
tation for ferocity. Callers wise in dogs observe 
that even as he roars he runs away, wagging his 
tail, and come boldly on to the north door, while 
Hamlet announces and denounces them at the 
south : 

"O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!" 

"A guilty thing." 

"A puff'd and reckless llbeitine." 

"A pestilence on him for a mad rogue I" 

"What, ho! help, help, help!" 

But when he has torn his **passion to tatters, to 
very rags," he slips in shyly to greet the accepted 
caller, usually seating himself, according to his 
own pecuhar code of etiquette, with his back to 
the guest, but sometimes, especially if it is a col- 
lege girl "in the morn and liquid dew of youth,'' 



364 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

he will, Instead of taking his accustomed place by 
me, lie down at Ophelia's feet, explaining: 

"Here's metal more attractive." 

Hamlet is a delicate subject for discipline as 
any sign of displeasure on the part of the few he 
trusts will fling him back to his puppy state of 
quivering misery. But for his inhospitable 
clamors he is occasionally shut up in the telephone 
closet, a custom which he considers 

"More honoured in the breach than the observance." 

Released, he bounds toward us beseeching ca- 
resses and every assurance that we have forgiven 
Jiim and love him still. But he is just as ready to 
Jbark at the next arrival, though the dread word 
CLOSET will sometimes arrest a roar in mid- 
career. His sense of duty, as the guardian of the 
house, Is Inextricably Intertwisted with his desire 
to be good. 

Hamlet has. Indeed, an uncharacteristic convic- 
tion of the preciousness of property. He did not 
learn it from me. I resent the metal that out- 
lasts flesh and bone and am careless about lock- 
ing doors since against grief and death no bolts 
avail; but Hamlet, had destiny put him In his 
proper place, would have ridden through life on 



HAMLET AND POLONIUS 365 

top of an express wagon, zealously guarding its 
packages from every thievish touch. As it is, he 
keeps an embarrassing watch and ward on my 
desk and bookcases. Often a seminar student, 
reaching for a volume that promises to throw 
light on the discussion, is amazed by the leap of 
what had seemed to be a slumbering collie, now 
all alert and vigilant, gently nipping her sleeve 
to hold that arm of robbery back. Or in the midst 
of committee tolls, a guileless colleague may move 
toward my desk to make a note. From the hall 
Hamlet dashes In with gleaming eyes and, as she 
turns in astonishment, squeezes his yellow bulk 
between her and that mysterious altar of my mid- 
night devotion and firmly shoves her back. These 
policeman ways of his are not universally endear- 
ing and, in return, he has no faith whatever In 
the honesty of my associates, "arrant knaves all." 
He has never put aside his dark suspicions of one 
who Is not only generosity Itself, but a socialist 
to boot, because on his first Christmas Eve In the 
Scarab she had been so kind as to act as her own 
Santa Claus and take away her labeled packet 
from the pile of tissue-papered and gay-ribboned 
gifts in a corner of the study. Although I had 



365 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

noticed that the puppy made a point of lying down 
before that heap, I did not realize that he, terri- 
fied and bashful as he then was, had constituted 
himself its custodian, till this action of hers left 
his soul *'full of discord and dismay." Even yet 
he heralds her approach with consternation: 

"O shame! where is thy blush?" 

"A most pernicious woman!" 

*'Marry, this is miching mallecho ; it means mischief." 

So our dog has few friends outside his home. 
It is difficult to maintain with the children on the 
hill the pleasant fiction that their Christmas play- 
things come from Hamlet when it so obviously 
"harrows" him "with fear and wonder" to see 
the little recipients allowed to bear these objects 
away. Laddie's mistress, ever gracious, pets and 
praises him, and hers is the only home in the vil- 
lage at which, sure of a happy welcome and de- 
lectable bits of bread and butter, he consents to 
call, but Jack's mistress, catholic as her sym- 
pathies are, remembers an unlucky encounter from 
which her famous comrade retired, blinking queer- 
]y, the loser of a tooth. It is, of course, her theory 
that Hamlet feloniously reached into Jack's mouth 
to snap out that treasure, while to me it seeips 



HAMLET AND POLONIUS 367 

crystal clear that Jack uprooted the venerable fang 
himself in an unholy effort to bite Hamlet; but 
now the collie is shut up whenever the terrier 
comes, though they manage to exchange through 
the windows a vituperative language not taught in 
our curriculum. 

Hoping to extend this too limited circle of 
Hamlet's friendships, we have accepted as a sum- 
mer guest a cynical old parrot, who has already, 
in a lifetime cruelly long for a captive, known a 
variety of vanishing households. The tones that 
Poor Pol echoes, the names that he calls, insist- 
ently and vainly, in his lonesome hours, the scraps 
of family talk dating perhaps from five, ten, 
twenty years ago that his strange voice, a mockery 
of the human, still repeats, make him, even to us, 
an awesome personage, a Wandering Jew of the 
caged-pet generations. What does he miss, what 
does he remember, as he sits sweetly crooning to 
himself "Peek-a-boo, Pol," and then rasps crossly 
out, "Wal I what is it?'' and then falls to a direful 
groaning "Oh!" and "Ahl" over and over, more 
and more feebly, as if in mimicry of a death-bed, 
and suddenly spreads his wings, hurrahs like a 
boy on the Glorious Fourth and storms our ears 



368 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

with a whole barn-yard of cackles and cocka- 
doodledoos? 

For the first few minutes after the arrival of 
Polonius, Hamlet regarded the great cage, set on 
top of a tall revolving bookcase, and its motion- 
less perching inmate, whose plumage of sheeny 
green was diversified by under-glints of red and 
the pride of a golden nape, as new ornaments 
committed to his guardianship. Erect ion his 
haunches, he gazed up at them with an air of 
earnest responsibility, but when Polonius, cocking 
his head and peering down on the collie w^ith one 
round orange eye, crisply remarked : 

*'Hello! What^s that? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!" 
Hamlet went wild with amazement. After mak- 
ing from every side vain leaps and scrambles to- 
ward the unperturbed parrot, he tore from one 
of us to another, with whines and imploring gaze 
striving to learn what this apparition might mean 

"So horridly to shake" his "disposition 
With thoughts beyond the reaches" of his soul. 

A week has passed and I begin to fear that 
Hamlet's antipathy to Polonius, "a foolish prat- 
ing knave," a "wretched, rash, intruding fool," 
is too deeply rooted in drama for life to eradi- 



HAMLET AND POLONIUS 369 

cate. The fault does not lie with the parrot. 
Though with him, as a rule, "brevity is the soul 
of wit," he accosts Hamlet quite as cordially as 
any other member of the family, with "Hello" 
when the dog trots into the room and "Good-by" 
when he trots out. He is, indeed, so far in sym- 
pathy with Hamlet that, well-nigh to our despair, 
He seconds the collie's uncivil clamor when the 
doorbell rings by stentorian shouts of "Fire I 
Fire! ! FIRE! ! !" We do not admit that, in gen- 
eral, Polonius talks only "words, words, words." 
If he does, the coincidences are uncanny, for he 
warns "Look out" as we lift his heavy cage and 
pronounces "All right" as we set it safely down. 
I was adding a column of figures yesterday and, as 
I named the total, Polonius said in an approving 
tone: "That's right; that's It." He has a mild 
curiosity about our doings and occasionally re- 
sponds to our overtures by offering to an out- 
stretched finger the chilly grip of his clay-colored 
claws,— invariably, like a well-bred bird, present- 
ing the right foot. If Housewife Honey voice 
undertakes to scratch the parrot's green head, 
Hamlet rears up against her and insists that the 
same ceremony be performed on his yellow one. 



370 SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE 

Polonius, for his part, though too blase for 
jealousy, has a proper self-respect, and when he 
overhears us comforting our troubled collie with 
murmurs of "Good Hamlet! Dear Hamlet 1*^ 
promptly interjects "Pretty Pol." 

But Hamlet, who is so sensitive to suffering 
that he will go of his own impulse to any visitor 
in trouble and press close, lavishing all his shy 
caresses in the effort to console, need not fear that 
Polonius will usurp his place in my affection. It 
19 all I have to give him and I shall not fail him 
there. I cannot give that fearful, only half- 
quieted heart the security it craves from 

"the thousand natural shocks 
That flesh is heir to." 

There is no security on this whirring planet 
where pain is pain, and loss is loss, but where, for 
our deepest of consolation, though it involves our 
keenest of grief, love is always love. 

"Keep me close,'' pleads Hamlet, and I prom- 
ise: "While I can." 

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